Basic to any lawyer’s understanding of the recording statutes,1 is the concept that the proper recording of an instrument in recordable form places “the whole world” on notice of the interest claimed in the recorded instrument.2 In a July 2011 Supreme Court decision from Brooklyn, Elbadawi v. City of New York,3 however, the court endeavors to find some boundaries as to whom in the whole world can complain if the recording clerk records an instrument erroneously.
In the landmark decision of Baccari v. De Santi,4 the Appellate Division, Second Department laid down the universally accepted doctrine that both the recording clerk and the municipality5 for whom the clerk works are liable for damages for misrecording. In Baccari, the one hurt by the misrecording was a senior lien holder, who lost seniority when it turned out that the premises were mortgaged to a junior mortgagee, who had no knowledge of the earlier lien because the clerk indexed the senior mortgage under the wrong town.
