The Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) has been the target in a lot of lawsuits during the mortgage crisis for its shoddy, opaque practices. But because these suits tend to be brought by borrowers in default, the courts have been willing to stretch the law to dismiss plaintiffs' claims. Something new is going on now. The Delaware Attorney General on October 27 sued MERS, a Delaware corporation, for deceptive trade practices for sowing confusion among investors and consumers and running an extra-legal registration system riddled with errors. The Delaware AG, Beau Biden, son of the vice president, is invoking the importance of transparent recording of property interests as a central part of American democracy since the colonial era. Some other AGs and other public officials are pursuing similar legal theories. The argument is that nothing is more important to our democracy than secure property rights recorded in transparent public records, and that the mortgage industry should not be permitted to take this away from us. To read about this new development, visit the Delaware Department of Justice web site, at http://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/