The Title Reporter: A Legal Update for the Title Insurance Industry

Here is what we cover in this issue of Title Insurance Update Winter 2024:

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, affirming a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, has ruled that Standard Exclusion 3(a) of a title insurance policy precluded coverage of fees and costs the insured incurred in defending a breach of contract lawsuit.
• An appellate court in New York, reversing a trial court’s decision, has dismissed third-party causes of action for fraudulent concealment and prima facie tort asserted against an agent for a title insurance company, finding that the third-party plaintiff’s allegations were insufficient to support its claims.
• An appellate court in New York, affirming a trial court’s decision, has rejected a plaintiff’s contention that he was the rightful owner of a farm in Saratoga County, New York, based on a drafting error in a deed prepared in 1984.
• A court in New York has ruled that an easement continued to exist as a matter of law, rejecting a property owner’s contentions that the easement had been extinguished or terminated based on the doctrines of frustration of purpose and impossibility and that, in any event, the easement had been abandoned by the plaintiff.
• In an action to quiet title, an appellate court in New Jersey has reversed a trial court’s order finding that the duration of an easement was limited to the lifetimes of the plaintiff and his wife. The appellate court decided that the plaintiff had been conveyed an easement in gross for the benefit of the plaintiff, his wife, and their children for as long as one of them own the property in Toms River, New Jersey.
• A trial court in New York has ruled that a notice to cure a default served on the lessee of a Brooklyn property by an entity that did not own the property was unenforceable.
• An appellate court in New York, affirming a trial court’s decision, has ruled that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate either an implied easement or an easement by prescription entitling her to use a dock.

Lawrence S. Han, Michael J. Heller and Matthew V. Spero