Court Cases
October 20, 2009
RECORDING LAW
Ricketts v. McCormack (PDF)
Civil Code Section 2941(c) provides in part, "Within two business days from the day of receipt, if received in recordable form together with all required fees, the county recorder shall stamp and record the full reconveyance or certificate of discharge." The court held that indexing is a distinct function, separate from recording a document, and is not part of section 2941(c)'s stamp-and-record requirement.
The court distinguished indexing, stamping and recording:
Stamping: The "stamping" requirement of Section 2941(c) is satisfied when the Recorder endorses on a reconveyance the order of receipt, the day and time of receipt and the amount of fees paid.
Recording: The reconveyance is "recorded" once the Recorder has confirmed the document meets all recording requirements, created an entry for the document in the "Enterprise Recording Archive" system, calculated the required fees and confirmed payment of the correct amount and, finally, generated a lead sheet containing, among other things, a bar code, a permanent recording number and the words "Recorded/Filed in Official Records."
Indexing: Government Code Section 27324 requires all instruments "presented for recordation" to "have a title or titles indicating the kind or kinds of documents contained therein," and the recorder is "required to index only that title or titles captioned on the first page of a document.
Cal.App. 2nd Dist. (B210123) 9/27/09
