Lee v. Fidelity National Title Insurance

This case concerns coverage under a title insurance policy issued by defendant Fidelity National Title Insurance Company to plaintiffs Karen and Terry Lee. Plaintiffs purchased property along Steamboat Slough in Solano County that was identified by two tax assessor parcel numbers. Defendant issued a preliminary report that referred repeatedly to both assessor parcels, and included a legal description of the property to be insured. The legal description, which matched the one in plaintiffs’ grant deed, was incorporated into the title insurance policy. Parcel number references were not incorporated into the terms of the policy, but the policy attached a map depicting the two parcels, which could have caused plaintiffs to believe they had purchased and insured both parcels. This expectation of coverage would not have been dispelled by a reading of the metes and bounds legal description, which required professional training to decipher and was ambiguous to a layperson. When plaintiffs later discovered they did not, in fact, own one of the assessor parcels and made a claim under the policy, defendant stood behind the legal description in the policy and denied coverage. The…