The Title Reporter — Summer 2022

Here is what we cover in this issue of The Title Reporter: A Legal Update for the Title Insurance Industry

• An appellate court in New York has ruled that an exclusion in a title insurance policy precluded coverage of a claim asserted by the policyholders.
• A federal district court in Illinois has rejected an insured’s lawsuit for breach of a title insurance policy, finding that the insured did not plead a loss or damage and explaining that the title insurance policy did “not cover future or possible damages or loss.”
• A Florida court has decided that an insurance company did not have to defend a title company in a lawsuit brought by a purchaser of property alleging that the title company wrongfully charged the purchaser a $300 fee instead of charging that fee to the seller of the property.
• The Supreme Court of Virginia has concluded that property owners could not enforce the terms of certain restrictive covenants because “changed circumstances” defeated the purpose of those restrictive covenants.
• The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that a three-day attorney review clause was not required in a sales contract executed after an absolute auction of residential real property.
• An appellate court in New Jersey has determined that a plaintiff’s claim to a continuing interest in certain property could not be sustained because a foreclosure sale cut off any further right the plaintiff may have had to purchase the property.
• An appellate court in Florida has reversed a trial court’s decision and decided that a reciprocal easement agreement among three entities was binding on one of the entities’ successors.

Michael J. Heller and Matthew V. Spero