Law Commons^™

The Spearing Tool Filing System Disaster, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Debtor name errors have been a substantial and persistent problem for filers and searchers in the Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 filing system. Filers make errors in spelling, punctuation, and spacing, use trade names, and include extraneous words. The law prior to 2001 excused such errors if they were minor and not seriously misleading. That put the burden on searchers to conduct reasonable diligent searches to find erroneous filings. The effect was to render all searches problematic and costly. The drafters of revised Article 9 conceived a brilliant solution to the problem with respect to corporate debtors (registered entities). First, …