Fraud against the registrar: Why the ‘De Jager line’ of authority is incorrect, and how unfairness in the Torrens system caused it to arise

The case law on ‘fraud against the registrar’ as a subcategory of statutory fraud has been the subject of recent cogent critique. Some of this has focussed on the case of Russo,1 which has been criticised for creating negative policy effects, and for being out of step with previous authority. However, this article will show that it is actually the series of cases beginning with De Jager2 and Hedley,3 in which statutory fraud was first held to include fraud against the registrar, which is incongruous, and incorrect. This has had a negative impact, seen in the way that it interacts with subsequent cases, in particular Russo, and Davis.4 This article argues that the distortion in the case law can be explained by the profound unfairness in the way disputes between mortgagors and mortgagees in the case of forged mortgages are currently resolved.