Prothonotary faces threat of lawsuit over backlog

03/26/02

By JOE CARLSON
The Express-Times

EASTON - Northampton County’s prothonotary may wind up handling the paperwork for a lawsuit in which it may be named as a defendant.

A group of title searchers and insurance agents has secured an Easton attorney and has threatened to sue the county if officials don’t address concerns about what they describe as a faulty computer system and a logjam of legal paperwork.

"I voiced concerns about this two years ago, and still nothing has been done," said Anthony Sortino Jr. of Midtown Abstract in Easton.

"We rely on public records. But at this point, we can’t rely on these records. They’re not accurate."

Sortino directed his comments to county council Thursday, when he and two other men involved in title work gave the county two weeks to address the problems before they file suit. They passed out copies of a similar lawsuit filed against Philadelphia in 1997 that resulted in a judge’s order to fix the backlogs.

County officials said the records are accurate, but they admitted the 10-week backlog for judgments and liens is too long. They also admitted the problems with the computer system have lingered since the new system was installed in anticipation of Y2K.

Prothonotary Holly Ruggiero, who took over the civil office shortly before the new year, said the backlog has been cut in half in the past three months.

Administration Director James Hickey predicted the office would be within a reasonable backlog - two to three weeks’ worth of papers - within three months, based on the progress of recent weeks.

Court Services Director Gerald Seyfried said the backlog resulted from a string of early retirements and other staff vacancies. Since most of the jobs have been filled again, the staff has worked diligently to bring the court papers - besides liens and judgments - up to acceptable standards.

"We have applied the energies of the staff to service the court’s needs. Now we are going to address the title searchers," Seyfried said.

"As long as the information is there for the public and as long as it’s accurate, we didn’t think it was a priority. The information is there."

Seyfried was referring to the daily sheets, also called the "blue sheets" because they’re printed on blue paper. The sheets list all the new civil actions that are not yet in the system.

But the lists are organized by day, not defendant, which means a searcher has to go through 30 to 40 pages of lists to make sure nothing has been filed against the subject during the backlog period. Before the new computer system, the daily sheets were "a page or two" long, Sortino said.

He said he has not personally suffered any losses from insuring a title where publicly available information later turned up that did not come up in a search. But he said real estate closings are "a ticking time bomb" that could go off at any point.

As for the computer woes in the prothonotary, Seyfried said the county’s computer software provider is working on installing a new version of the software that will fix the existing bugs.

Seyfried could not say when the software will be up and running. Hickey said the county has withheld two payments from the software company because it failed to make "milestones" outlined in the contract.

The county hired Utah-based Progressive Solutions Inc. to install an integrated database for the county’s row offices because of Y2K concerns, but the company folded before it could finish the installation.

More than two dozen title searchers held a meeting with County Executive Glenn Reibman in 2000 to discuss concerns about the software. Reibman said he thought the problems were addressed after the county hired another Utah company, Tiburon Justice Systems, to fix the PSI software for $479,000 last year.

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-- Anonymous, March 27, 2002