Pittsburgh Legal Back Talk Turns 100 (Posts)

Posted By Cliff Tuttle | February 20, 2009

Posted by Cliff Tuttle

Another milestone. I posted my 100th piece on this blog early yesterday morning. The first was in July 2008. It wasn’t long before I started receiving real comments. One of the first was from a Magisterial District Judge who pointed out a missing piece of information in a post on landlord-tenant statutes. We’ve grown steadily since then. Today, after just 100 posts, we’re ranked number 245 in traffic on the Avvo Top Legal Blogs List.

What brought the most response among the first 100 posts? Most likely, it was the series on the LandAmerica 1031 bankruptcy. At the time I posted the first in the series, just before Thanksgiving, nobody had quite told the story, at least not on the web sources that I was reading. Title industry people who worked for the companies involved said that they had been told nothing about the merger at work. If you joined us late or just weren’t interested at the time, here’s the series in order:

LandAmerica Bankruptcy – No, Not Over Claims or Market Decline; Its All About Like Kind Exchanges under IRS Code Section 1031! (November 27, 2008) [Fidelity National rejected the acquisition of LandAmerica because its 1031 subsidiary was defaulting on its obligations, so LandAmerica filed bankruptcy and entered an agreement to sell Lawyers Title and Commonwealth Title to Fidelity.]

A Tale of Two Citadels: the Fall of Guaranty Title and Trust and the Shoring up of Commonwealth and Lawyers Title. (November 28, 2008)[While a small Ohio title insurer was defaulting on coverage, Fidelity reinsured all of the policies issued by Lawyer’s and Commonwealth as a show of financial soundness.]

LandAmerica Update. (December 20, 2008)[Merger proceeds apace with expected approval by the Bankruptcy Court on December 22.]

LandAmerica 1031: The Missing Link Lost but Then Found! (January 6, 2009) [A reader told me that the link at the end of my first post to a LandAmerica 1031 website post, warning against the potential for 1031 agent’s default, had been pulled. I recovered and reposted it.]

FNF Takes Some Heat on the Commonwealth-Lawyers Acquisition (January 15, 2009) [Fascinating account of how the Fidelity PR conference call got out of hand and revealed that the job of bringing Commonwealth and Lawyers into the Fidelity family would be a difficult one.]

LandAmerica 1031 Pingbacks v.the Zombie Bots. [I received almost as many pingbacks (14) from 1031 companies to my Missing Link post as I get in zombie bots on a busy day.]

A few of my favorites:

Ashley Anger is on the Loose! (February 3)

Poor Richard on Courts. ( December 13, 2008)

The Original Blogger: Poor Richard Still Has It. ( December 16, 2008)

One Person . . . One of a Kind . . . a Force. (January 17, 2009)

Welcome

CLIFF TUTTLE has been a Pennsylvania lawyer for over 45 years and (inter alia) is a real estate litigator and legal writer. The posts in this blog are intended to provide general information about legal topics of interest to lawyers and consumers with a Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania focus. However, this information does not constitute legal advice and there is no lawyer-client relationship created when you read this blog. You are encouraged to leave comments but be aware that posted comments can be read by others. If you wish to contact me in privacy, please use the Contact Form located immediately below this message. I will reply promptly and in strict confidence.

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