WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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It’s December! I have updated our KCLL Newsletter to the “winter theme” and am very much enjoying this snowy start to what is my favorite season. [I just looked and apparently some department head, King Winter, whoever, says that winter officially starts on December 21 (solstice). What a crock, right? If it were December 20th and you said, “What a lovely autumn day!” I would think you a psychopath and allow the widest berth possible… Winter obviously runs December 1 through the end of February.] Anyway, I love the cold, the rain, and the darkness, which I know is odd—I’ve heard it said that for someone who needs a compensatory reason to enjoy winter, they can think, “Well, you need the winter’s constant rain to have our amazing forests,” which is of course true, but I’m happy without such a justification.

That’s all to say, gratitude is on my mind. I’m grateful to see my warm breath in the morning. I’m grateful for personal and familial reasons that exceed the scope of this blog. And I’m grateful for my coworkers at the law library, who are kind and patient with me, and who are always a bastion of knowledge. Counting on my fingers and toes, between the six of us, we have 78 combined years of experience (with a tenure of less than three years, I’m obviously tanking the average tenure of ~13 years), which means that given any specific or oddball question, one of us has an answer, or a direction in which to look.

“But Ross,” you might ask, “would you stop dithering and tell us the precious Ref Q?” Well, the Ref Q is one simply answered, and frankly not the focus of today’s column in many ways:

I work for a bank that has foreclosed on a house. The [previous] owner won’t leave. Will your eviction packet work in this situation?

That’s the gist of the email I received. If you have some background in real property, the answer to this question is glaringly obvious. I’m going to spare you my research play-by-play to say: no, eviction is the process for booting someone when there’s a landlord-tenant relationship—ejectment is the correct process for this situation, which is a special type of proceeding (akin to quieting a title) under RCW 7.28. It’s, from what I’ve read since, a lengthier process vs. eviction. It’s also fairly complicated, so the querier was encouraged to seek counsel. 

“But Ross,” you’re wailing through bitter tears, “what about the research lessons to be learned? Have you totally abandoned the thrust of this column?”

Rest easy, dear reader, because today’s lesson has arrived. I looked through our eviction packet, I looked through the Landlord-Tenant statutes, and I tried many search queries- to no avail. After a long while, I leaned over to ask a coworker and they immediately replied, “It’s ejectment, not eviction.” Again, this is probably obvious to those with a background, but I had never seen it before. My coworker had.

As I then read up on ejectment, I got a laugh out of the Washington Practice introduction on the topic (Real Estate: Transactions – Stoebuck/Weaver) and shared this quote with another coworker:

Not only that sentence and that section but the entire chapter are poorly organized, a patchwork quilt of several different actions, created at different times by the legislature and jumbled together in ways that often make it difficult to tell which provisions pertain to which actions.

That coworker replied, “Ejectment?”

And so, I’m grateful for institutional knowledge, a source of knowledge that I consistently fail to think of as foundational. It’s true that I often seek such input from my coworkers, despite my fear of being seen as an imposition—but it needs saying that for research purposes, people are as useful, if not more so, than any database. Relying on others is a good thing. Of course, something is gained in initially trying your own hand, and you should verify important information gained on your own, but there’s no use in beating your head against a wall when a colleague is happy to help.

My imagined, irate reader is now seething—was the point of this column really so obvious? To encourage asking for help? Yep! I’m a firm believer that the atomization of society won’t last, and there’s no future where we don’t embrace our need for one another. So go ahead, enter the hardware store and immediately flag down the nearest worker! Give yourself a shot on the assignment, but don’t fail to ask for your boss’ input! And if you’re at a research dead end, don’t hesitate to contact us at the law library! We’re happy to help.

Happy holidays!

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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Welcome back to Ross’ Ref Q’s! We had our quarterly bye month in October to allow my ref q energies to recharge, but now ref q answering energy is radiating from my fingertips! This month’s ref q involves shame and deed recording:

How do I remove a discriminatory covenant on the deed of my house?

This was an emailed question. A new homeowner found out that the deed to their house contained a decades-old, racially-based restrictive covenant and ran up against the issue of deed recording. Deeds are passed hand to hand, with new recordings adding new information, but almost never altering what’s already written—it’s a recording, right?

But Seattle, King County, and much of the United States has a shameful history of restricting where people can live based off their ethnicity and race. While these types of covenants and discriminations were nominally made void decades ago, their depressive effects persist in the form of disparate rates of home ownership and generational wealth. At the same time, though these covenants are now unenforceable, they persist in the public record as recorded covenants.

Unenforceable as these covenants may be, I get why someone would want to distance their noxious history from the place they call home. But is altering the deed possible?

King County has a helpful guide for how to file a modification with the Recorder’s office. Their words: “Recording a modification document will provide notice in the land title records that the restrictive covenant is void and unenforceable. It will not delete the historic record.” This process will thus help many folks, but not our present querier. We want the covenant gone.

Helpfully, the county has another guide on how to remove covenants. Less helpfully, the process is thus explained: “If the owner wants the covenant removed, they go to Superior Court (paying the nominal court fee) in the county in which the property is located. Superior Court may issue a declaratory judgment action – entering an order striking the void provisions from the public records and eliminating the void provisions from the title.”

This certainly makes it sound like you can waltz into 516 3rd Ave, pay a fee, and get your “declaratory judgment,” whatever that means! This description elides the “How” part of “How to remove restrictive covenants.” Filing any kind of lawsuit is complicated and time-intensive, and this FAQ entry unfortunately makes a molehill out of what is at least a somewhat formidable landmass.

At least we know that it is possible! This wasn’t a sure thing, because as discussed, recorded documents like to be wholly retained. Perhaps there is a statutory or regulatory basis for this? Time to check ye olde secondary sources – Washington Practice. I searched the whole series (via Westlaw) for “restrictive covenants,” but this yielded too many results—restrictive covenants are only our emphasis to the extent that they are discriminatory. So, I retooled my search to “discriminatory covenants” and the top result seemed relevant.

Washington Practice Volume 17 Real Estate: Property Law § 3.1.70. speaks to discriminatory covenants and says that it was only recently that the legislature adopted RCW 49.60.227 to allow the removal of discriminatory covenants. Statutory language – bingo!

RCW 49.60.227 sez “The action shall be an in rem, declaratory judgment action whose title shall be the description of the property. The necessary party to the action shall be the owner, occupant, or tenant of the property or any portion thereof. The person bringing the action shall pay a fee set under…”

This is enough for a patron, I think.

• • Declaratory judgments, see:
    • • CR 57
      • 15 Washington Practice § 42:11. Declaratory Judgments: Procedure generally
  • In rem jurisdiction
    • • 14 Washington Practice Chapter 5: In rem jurisdiction

The next steps would probably be modifying a blank probate form caption (or some other Ex Parte material) to say “In rem of: [the property]” and to use the above texts, perhaps our civil lawsuit packet, to cobble together a complaint for declaratory judgment against the discriminatory covenant. This would likely entail service by publication, as seen in the chapter for in rem jurisdiction.

A determined pro se litigant who wants to excise the unenforceable bits from their deed can likely achieve it, although they will likely find the process opaque, time consuming, and discombobulating. In other words, right up my alley.

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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Welcome back to Ross’ Ref Q’s. We had a bye month in July, and to get the Ref Q wheels turning once again, August’s Q is… something of a nothingburger. Instead of highlighting interesting reference strategies, this Q allows me to ruminate on the limits of human capacity and the nature of regret. No, I’m not fun at parties.

The question came from who I assumed was an attorney-type:

Who is defined as a common carrier “passenger” in Washington?

My little knowledge of common carriers comes from reading about the political movement to treat internet providers as common carriers. What they are are essentially logistic companies responsible for transporting goods or services and that are available to the public. Operating as a common carrier opens you up to certain liabilities, because you’re establishing a duty to your passengers or payloads.

Which is enough of a background to ask, well, who is considered a passenger?

The question came in a month or two ago, and I’m unable to faithfully replicate the information search on which I embarked. I know that I opened up Westlaw and therein the digital version of Washington Practice, as I typically do, and I believe I tried using the search box for “common carrier” in the Civil Procedure and Elements of an Action volumes. Why these? I believe the patron suggested Elements of an Action, which I latched onto. Civil Procedure was probably just force of habit. These aren’t an apt fit though, in hindsight, and as such they returned no results. At that point, I think I was flustered and backed away from state-specific resources, and instead retrieved the CJS volume that dealt with common carriers, and sure enough there was a section on what constitutes a passenger. Resource: found. Mission: accomplished-ish.

Returning to the question to see if there was enough meat for this column, I searched all of Washington Practice off the bat, not specific volumes and found… many, many relevant sections: Pattern jury instructions for what constitutes a common carrier passenger in Washington. Lengthy sections in the Torts volume that deal with this very question. How did I miss these? CJS is fine, but these are state-specific and I mean, literal jury instructions (ie plain English statutory heuristics). The Torts volume itself would have ably answered his question, or even the Methods of Practice volume. How did I miss all of this?

I don’t know why I didn’t search more broadly in Washington Practice. And now, months removed, I can’t recall any factors that may have affected me: Was it busy? I don’t remember a line. Was the user impatient? It’s possible, but usually such dispositions don’t influence my work, or I like to think that they don’t. Was I distracted, or was there cause for underperformance? Well, my toddler started daycare in May, and I’ve been sick and harried for most of the time since, which I don’t like to posit- but even so, I routinely locate resources without fail.

It seems to come down to the fact that I’m human and made a mistake, whatever the cause. I don’t consider myself a perfectionist, but even a slight error like this seems to haunt me. Part of it is the ramifications of law librarianship- what if I gave a similarly off base resource to a pro se patron? What if someone relied on an authority I provided, which led to their complete and utter ruin?

That would suck for sure. But I have to remind myself I can only do my best, and admit that in my position, I’m more likely to help someone starting off than ruin someone’s long fought progress – if I were able to knock their action into disarray, as a public librarian, it is likely the situation was tenuous and likely to fall into disarray anyway. Or, that’s what I tell myself to push forward.

But there is some research strategy to be gleaned. Fairly obviously, it helps to start with a wide net, then narrow your focus as you go. In this case, starting a search in Westlaw for the Q in all of Washington Practice would have yielded a book in hand within a minute or so. This is true for other databases and physical resources as well- don’t commit yourself to a single chapter if you aren’t certain it’s what you need.

With that, a related consideration barely worth dwelling on is that I’m sure I latched onto Elements of an Action because the user suggested it. I almost never recommend that volume because there’s usually a better fit, so I suppose the user’s suggestion carried additional weight. I wonder if they hadn’t suggested it, would I have performed a general search off the bat? I can’t say, but it’s worth considering that past experience, that of a user or our own experience, shouldn’t constrain our strategy and should be taken with a small grain of salt. Again, keeping an information search more general off the bat is preferred, because, in this situation, a general search of Washington Practice would have displayed chapters from Elements of an Action anyway, if they existed.

There’s also the matter of defining good enough. From what I recall, the attorney was grateful for the CJS chapter and carried on his way. If the user was happy, it’s possible that resource was “good enough.” I should smile more.

Join us next month for another great Ref Q—hopefully one less suited to my depressive inclinations. シ