Court Opinion

ID: 9549727
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:24:05.397547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:49.522348
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Day
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because in order to arrive at the conclusion therein it was necessary to conveniently include “tract indices” within the index of records required by C.R.S. 35-4-11. However, a reading of that section indicates that the index therein required is specifically limited to a grantor-grantee index, each to be arranged in alphabetical order.
A tract index is no part of a record required to be kept by a county clerk and recorder. The mere fact that in order to accommodate the public the county is required to furnish an abstract where no private company exists to furnish the same, does not, in my opinion, bring within the definition of public records those things which the clerk as an abstracter has compiled for his convenience in rendering a particular service which the county supplies for a fee.
The majority opinion states as the law, for which I see no authority quoted thereon, that what is in a public *611office is also available to a member of the public for the mere asking, unless there is a statute prohibiting the same. I think, rather, that the converse is true. Unless the law specifically makes the particular subject available to a member of the general public, then one cannot claim it unto himself as a matter of public right. This particular compilation and books is as much a property as anything else acquired by the county and should be disposed of as property.
From the records which the county clerk and recorder is required to keep, together with the alphabetical indices, anyone can compile an abstract book or tract index. To be sure it is expensive and if done at a late date, requires a lot of backtracking. The value of the tract index is that it is continuous and up to date and concerns a particular piece of described land. There is nothing about a tract index that is, as the majority opinion states, “as much a part of the public records as the records themselves.” And it is not a factual statement that “without them public record offices would be a senseless mass of impossible to use documents, books and papers.” No county clerk and recorder in the state has such an index unless it is in the abstract business, and so it is not such a record as is necessary for the recorder to discharge his duty. The majority opinion states that “indices are necessary for the recorder properly to discharge the duties of his office and which would have to be kept even if the statute did not expressly so require.” This may be true of a grantor-grantee index, but it is doubtful whether even a tract index is not absolutely necessary in the abstracting business. Rather, without the tract indices the furnishing of an abstract of title would be a very cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive procedure and could not be done for the fees now ordinarily charged for each abstract entry and the certificate. But this plaintiff in error admits it could still get into the abstract business without the tract indices.
*612I can see no valid reason — merely because this piece of property is owned by the county and the original was paid for by tax funds — why the county should be required by the judiciary to part with it to the first one who asks for it without compensation. One who intends to engage in what must be considered to be a profitable business should not hesitate as a matter of initial investment to pay a reasonable price therefor. The fact that the Legislature has seen fit by the statute quoted in the majority opinion to now expressly require payment does not mean that before the statute such property owned by the county has to be transferred without compensation. Photographing of these pages on microfilm is just as much a transfer of the property as to hand over the books themselves. And I challenge the Indiana case (Robison v. Fishback) quoted in the majority opinion as any authority for the conclusion therein. In the Robison case the county kept the indices as against a party claiming them as his own invention and the court upheld the county. Such a case and result is hardly authority for the proposition that Chaffee County cannot keep the indices but must turn them over to strangers who have no claim to them except as a member of the general public.
Mr. Justice McWilliams joins in this dissent.