National Lumber v Lombardi

A disturbing and far-reaching decision by the Massachusetts Appeals Court is the lead story in this week’s Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. “Registry’s late recording won’t bar lien enforcement” reports on National Lumber v Lombardi, a case about the enforceability of a mechanic’s lien. After filing the applicable notice requirements at the registry, the plaintiff filed suit and then sent an attested copy of the complaint to the registry of deeds with the correct filing fee by Federal Express. The document was received by the registry well within the 30 days required by statute to perfect the lien, but the registry did not actually record the document for nearly five weeks, a delay that put the time of recording outside of the statutory period. (This happened in 2002 when historically high recording volumes caused most registries to fall far behind in the recording of mail). The defendants moved to dismiss the mechanic’s lien on the grounds that the required complaint was not timely filed. The Appeals Court disagreed, stating that the registry of deeds had a duty to record documents received by mail correctly and within 24 hours of receipt. The court further stated that the registry’s failure to do this could not be used to harm the party that had mailed the documents. The court’s remedy seemed to be to deem a document to be “recorded” at the moment it is received by the registry of deeds and not the time it is actually entered into the registry’s computer system and assigned an instrument number and an official time of recording. The implications of this decision for registries and title examiners are enormous. As long as the customer gets the document to the registry, it places the duty of recording it in the right place (registered or recorded) within an impossibly short (given our present staffing levels) period of time. The implications for title examiners are even worse: now you have to be concerned not with the time the registry recorded the document but with the time the registry received the document. Good luck figuring that out. This certainly won’t be the end of our discussion of this case, so check back in the future for more analysis.