## Facts

- In January 1983, Martin A. Harrison, III executed a conventional mortgage on immovable property in favor of Lucille Scovotto Voelkel.
- The recorded mortgage identified the mortgagor as “Martin **A.** Harrison, III.”
- The title records identified the owner as “Martin Harrison, III” (without the middle initial).
- In December 1985, State Farm Acceptance Corporation of Louisiana, Inc. acquired and recorded a later mortgage interest in the same property.
- After Harrison defaulted, Voelkel filed a petition for executory process (foreclosure) in April 1988.
- State Farm intervened and sought to rank the mortgages, relying on *First Financial Bank, F.S.B. v. Johnson*, 477 So. 2d 1267 (La. App. 4th Cir. 1985), which had applied a strict name-matching approach in certain public-records disputes.
- Voelkel pointed to La. R.S. 9:2728 (enacted in 1987), which states that a mortgage should not lose effectiveness or rank solely because it includes or omits a mortgagor’s middle name or initial, or uses another reasonable name variation.
- The trial court refused to apply La. R.S. 9:2728 to State Farm’s 1985 mortgage transaction and ranked State Farm’s mortgage ahead of Voelkel’s.
- Voelkel appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Voelkel’s 1983 recorded mortgage, identifying the mortgagor as “Martin A. Harrison, III” rather than “Martin Harrison, III,” was effective against and superior in rank to State Farm’s later mortgage under Louisiana’s public records doctrine and La. R.S. 9:2728.

## Decision

- The court of appeal reversed the trial court.
- It held Voelkel’s 1983 mortgage was effective against third persons and ranked ahead of State Farm’s 1985 mortgage despite the middle-initial discrepancy.
- The court rejected State Farm’s attempt to use the name variation to defeat notice and obtain first rank.

## Legal Principles

- Under Louisiana’s public records doctrine, third persons are charged with notice of properly recorded instruments affecting immovable property when the record is sufficient to alert a reasonable party to the encumbrance.
- A minor variation in a person’s name in the recorded documents (such as the addition or omission of a middle name or initial) does not, by itself, eliminate the notice function of recordation where the instrument and the public record, read as a whole, adequately identify the person and the property.
- La. R.S. 9:2728 reflects legislative policy that a mortgage is not inferior solely because it includes or omits a mortgagor’s middle name or initial, or uses another reasonable variation, and it contemplates that record searches should account for such variations.
- A subsequent mortgagee cannot claim priority based on a technical name variation when a reasonable search of the public records would reveal the earlier recorded mortgage.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit held that Voelkel’s earlier recorded mortgage retained priority over State Farm’s later mortgage because the middle-initial difference did not defeat the notice provided by the public records, and State Farm could not rely on that minor variation to prime the earlier encumbrance.


Voelkel v. Harrison, 572 So. 2d 724 (1990)