As 95% or more of the people searching title here in Ohio are not attorneys, the non-attorney title examiner reports the information found in the respective county records to THE ATTORNEY or to the TITLE COMPANY who hired them. Here in Ohio, title examiners / searchers do not certifiy tilte to anybody regardless of who hired them to perfom a title search. Also, 99% of those search request also specify a certain time frame the title search is to cover. It is up to the attorney or the title company representative to review the hired and usually a sub-contracted title examiner / searcher's title search report and it's support courthouse copies to discover situations just like this in advance.

Oil and gas leases and the language contained in them and usually a number of assignments usually make it very difficult to determine who actually owns what type of rights, if any. Due to this point, our office reports the oil and gas document found of record and who the lessee is as it is shown on the document and the record reference where found. If there are marginal notations for assignments, we report as follows after the disclosure (WITH NUMEROUS MARGINAL NOTATIONS). We leave it up to the hiring attorney or title company to review the oil and gas lease document and whatever marginally notated documents to deteremine whatever interest owned and by what entity.  

There is an Ohio State Supreme court proven standard defended and successfully decided in the title examiner's / searcher's favor on just this matter. It is basically called "Privity of contract". In a nut shell this means only the hiring party can be entitled to damages against the sub-contracted title examiner / searcher who may or may not missed reporting a publicly recorded document and it's interest. This matter of law dates back to the early 1900's but was recently (Nov., 2002) reinforced by the Ohio State Supreme court.

Just curious, if the attorney had hired a "Kelly Girl" to type his legal documents and the attorney did not review those legal documents before presenting them to whomever, is the "Kelly Girl" herself responsible for any ommission on said document(s) or the Attorney? No title examiner / searcher cannot prevent from being sued, but we can do the best we can to prevail.