Federal Natl. Mtge. Assn. v. Levine-Rodriguez

In Federal Natl. Mtge. Assn. v. Levine-Rodriguez (153 Misc 2d 8 [1991]), a deed conveying property to a person having two last names of "Levine" and "Rodriguez" had no hyphen and was indexed under the letter "R," but the mortgage contained a hyphen and was indexed under the letter "L." The court, after a scholarly review of the previous case law and the history of the amendment to Real Property Law 316, held that the error, consisting of indexing the mortgage under the letter "L," could not provide constructive notice to a mortgagee, whose subsequent mortgage was recorded after a title search failed to detect that the prior mortgage had been indexed under "L" and not "R."