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The Green Bag

As to the practical operation of the Torrens Law let me quote as authority Judge Davis of the Land Court of

Massachusetts, who in 1908 spoke as follows before the

New

York

State

Bar Association :— The growth of new business has thus far shown a moderate but absolutely steady increase, both in the number of applications ﬁled and in the assessed valuation of the property registered. In 1899 it was $626,000; in 1902, $1,991,000; in 1907, $3,643,000. People who once apply for registration of title come back again. No suit has ever been brought against the Commonwealth, nor have I ever heard of any claim being suggested that anybody has ever been cut oﬁ from any right or interest in land during the ten years in which the land title registra tion act has been in operation. We have registered the titles to over $20,000,000 worth of property at assessed valuations and to a vastly larger amount of actual valuation as the same property stands today. We have some 8.000 instruments in existence in the metropolitan district alone. No claim, as I said, has been made, and no litigation of any kind has ever been brought that I have ever heard of by or against anybody because of his title having been registered. Nobody has been involved in any of those many theoretical diiﬁculties which we have heard described because he has had a registered title.

There has never been a suit, there has

never been a petition, there has never been even a question as to the meaning of a single clause of the land registration act.

It is to be noted that this Torrens

Law is practically the same in all states, and consequently an adjudication in Massachusetts would constitute a pre cedent for other states. But the law has also been tested in separate actions brought in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and California, where the highest court

Hopkins, 96 Minn. 119; Kerrigan, 151

Robinson v.

Cal. 40; Titlg &’ Docu

ment Restoration Co. v. Kerrigan, 88 Pac. Rep. 356. Now, as to the history of the law in this state, it is a well-known fact that the monopoly of the business of title

searching gradually acquired by the old title insurance companies, their rapacity, greed and exorbitant charges, and the

serious mistakes made and losses en tailed, had become a grave public scandal. For years the public sought relief and remedial legislation, but found the hostile forces arrayed against them

here and in Albany were too wealthy and powerful. It was only when Charles E. Hughes became Governor that this

great reform was made possible and carried into eﬁect. In the year 1907 an act was passed

by the legislature of the State of New York, known as Chapter 628 of the Laws of 1907, authorizing the appoint ment of a commission “to examine the system of registering titles to real

property, known as the Torrens System and to report on the expediency of the

establishment of that or a similar system in the State of New York, and, if deemed expedient, to draft a proposed law for the registration of such titles and to investigate and report on the nature and condition of titles to real property

in the State of New York.” In accord ance therewith, a commission of real

estate experts and lawyers was appointed by Governor Hughes, numerous public

hearings were held in New York City

constitutional and not open to attack.

and other cities of the state, and a vast amount of valuable statistical informa tion collected, showing the operation of

See People v. Crissman,

the Torrens System in other countries

in each state has held this law to be Register of

Titles (Colo. 1907), 92 Pac. 949; People v. Simon, 176 Ill. 175; Glos v. Kingman,

and in other states of the United States.

207 Ill. 26; State v. Westfall, 85 Minn.

The commission reported in favor of the Torrens System as against the old

437; National Bond (‘5' Security 07- v

method of searching titles and issuing