When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight. - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Sunday, February 3, 2008

OT: Judge throws out case against Chesapeake circuit court clerk

See the courts staff take care of their own. These companies pay research to research land deeds before the sell of any land, so in fact 90% of the work required is done by outside source, then why should it take so long for the clerk to o their job, it should.. However I bet they inform the tax office ASAP so they can make sure they get their money...



CHESAPEAKE – A judge has thrown out a lawsuit against Chesapeake’s Circuit Court Clerk Faye Mitchell over her office’s backlog in processing land transactions two years ago.

Visiting Circuit Judge Pamela Baskerville stopped the lawsuit by title company ReQuire LLC of Virginia Beach from proceeding Wednesday. She ruled that the company had no standing to file for damages. In the lawsuit, ReQuire argued that state law provides for damages if documents called “certificates of satisfactions’’ are not properly and timely recorded.

Mitchell’s attorney, Jeff Rosen of the Pender & Coward lawfirm, argued that the case should be dropped because the title company had not suffered any specific damages. Rosen also argued that the state law applied to the actual property owners who may have suffered damages.

“The clerk is pleased with the court’s ruling and believes that the case lacked any merit from the start,’’ Rosen said.

At the time of the lawsuit, the backlog problem existed for several years and grew worse during the city’s housing boom two years ago. Before Mitchell took office in 2004, former clerk Lillie Hart called the staffing level in her deeds office inadequate and blamed the situation on state budget cuts.

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