Hamilton County Registered Land litigation update

As previously reported in this blog, this firm has been honored to be selected as counsel to a group of Registered Land property owners to save that land registration system in Hamilton County, Ohio.

In the fall of 2014, the Hamilton County Commission voted 2-1 to abolish the Torrens land registration system.  Hamilton County has enjoyed the highest rate of land registration in the State.  Our clients then filed suit to block the abolition, in part based upon significant procedural errors on the part of the Hamilton County Commission in that abolition action.

During the pendency of that lawsuit, we successfully sought and obtained an injunction against the abolition of the system, requiring the Hamilton County Recorder to continue both “regular” land recording and the Torrens indexing.

In late October Judge Charles Kubicki dismissed the lawsuit, and then our plaintiff clients sought a “stay” of that decision — and a continuation of the Torrens land registration system pending appeal — first from Judge Kubicki and then from the 1st District Court of Appeals.  Both of those motions were denied.

Thus, at present, the Hamilton County Recorder has ceased some aspects of Torrens Land Registration.  We will report more fully in an update which procedures remain.

However, our appeal remains pending, and we have filed a motion with the Court of Appeals to expedite the disposition of the appeal, as the difficulty in restoring the Registered Land System may be compounded as time passes and hundreds if not thousands of documents require corrective indexing.

We’ll keep our blog readers advised as the appeal progresses.

 

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