60
The Green Bag
As to the practical operation of the Torrens Law let me quote as authority Judge Davis of the Land Court of
Massachusetts, who in 1908 spoke as follows before the
New
York
State
Bar Association :— The growth of new business has thus far shown a moderate but absolutely steady increase, both in the number of applications filed and in the assessed valuation of the property registered. In 1899 it was $626,000; in 1902, $1,991,000; in 1907, $3,643,000. People who once apply for registration of title come back again. No suit has ever been brought against the Commonwealth, nor have I ever heard of any claim being suggested that anybody has ever been cut ofi from any right or interest in land during the ten years in which the land title registra tion act has been in operation. We have registered the titles to over $20,000,000 worth of property at assessed valuations and to a vastly larger amount of actual valuation as the same property stands today. We have some 8.000 instruments in existence in the metropolitan district alone. No claim, as I said, has been made, and no litigation of any kind has ever been brought that I have ever heard of by or against anybody because of his title having been registered. Nobody has been involved in any of those many theoretical diificulties which we have heard described because he has had a registered title.
There has never been a suit, there has
never been a petition, there has never been even a question as to the meaning of a single clause of the land registration act.
It is to be noted that this Torrens
Law is practically the same in all states, and consequently an adjudication in Massachusetts would constitute a pre cedent for other states. But the law has also been tested in separate actions brought in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and California, where the highest court
Hopkins, 96 Minn. 119; Kerrigan, 151
Robinson v.
Cal. 40; Titlg &’ Docu
ment Restoration Co. v. Kerrigan, 88 Pac. Rep. 356. Now, as to the history of the law in this state, it is a well-known fact that the monopoly of the business of title
searching gradually acquired by the old title insurance companies, their rapacity, greed and exorbitant charges, and the
serious mistakes made and losses en tailed, had become a grave public scandal. For years the public sought relief and remedial legislation, but found the hostile forces arrayed against them
here and in Albany were too wealthy and powerful. It was only when Charles E. Hughes became Governor that this
great reform was made possible and carried into efiect. In the year 1907 an act was passed
by the legislature of the State of New York, known as Chapter 628 of the Laws of 1907, authorizing the appoint ment of a commission “to examine the system of registering titles to real
property, known as the Torrens System and to report on the expediency of the
establishment of that or a similar system in the State of New York, and, if deemed expedient, to draft a proposed law for the registration of such titles and to investigate and report on the nature and condition of titles to real property
in the State of New York.” In accord ance therewith, a commission of real
estate experts and lawyers was appointed by Governor Hughes, numerous public
hearings were held in New York City
constitutional and not open to attack.
and other cities of the state, and a vast amount of valuable statistical informa tion collected, showing the operation of
See People v. Crissman,
the Torrens System in other countries
in each state has held this law to be Register of
Titles (Colo. 1907), 92 Pac. 949; People v. Simon, 176 Ill. 175; Glos v. Kingman,
and in other states of the United States.
207 Ill. 26; State v. Westfall, 85 Minn.
The commission reported in favor of the Torrens System as against the old
437; National Bond (‘5' Security 07- v
method of searching titles and issuing
