[crotchfire]

Of course they know. They also wisely refuse to accept responsibility for the reprecussions of being wrong.

This is the whole point of title insurance. You aren't paying for the answer. You're paying somebody to accept massive liability if the answer is wrong.

There is something called the "Torrens Title System" where the government does accept some part of this liability, subject to a huge raft of weird terms and conditions that the legislature can change unilaterally after the fact. It has only been successful in countries lacking constitutional limits on eminent domain, since in those places landowners are already subject to legislative whims anyways:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title

It has been a flop in every US jurisdiction that has tried it.

When given a choice between transferring responsibility to somebody who can be sued (states can't) and gives you a contract, vs someone who can't and won't, it turns out people prefer the former.