Richard Hammel began including a disclaimer this week in the property title reports he prepares for clients in Orleans Parish. It says the abstractor should not be held responsible for reports that are incorrect or incomplete because of faulty information received from Clerk of Civil District Court Dale Atkins’ office.
Atkins’ office is under fire from abstractors and other people whose livelihood depends on buying and selling real estate in the city. They say the office has botched the rollout of a massive new computer system intended to merge hundreds of thousands of documents from the city’s once-separate mortgage, conveyance and notarial archives offices.