Luttrell

The respondent, Mrs. Ethel J. Luttrell, was induced by one John J. MacArthur, a real estate agent and notary public in Mill Valley, Marin County, to make a loan of $1,000 on two lots in Mill Valley owned by W. C. Wright of Los Angeles, in consummation of which MacArthur delivered to Mrs. Luttrell a deed of trust purporting to have been signed by the owner and his wife, and bearing MacArthur’s notarial certificate of acknowledgment, wherein he certified that W. C. Wright and Ethel E. W. C. Wright, known to him to be the persons whose names were subscribed to said trust deed, had personally appeared before him and acknowledged to him that they executed said instrument. A cashier’s check for the amount of the loan was delivered to MacArthur, who subsequently absconded, and thereafter his whereabouts was unknown. Following his disappearance Mrs. Luttrell discovered that the signatures attached to the deed of trust and the promissory note accompanying the same were forgeries, and that the recitals in the certificate of acknowledgment were wholly false; whereupon she brought this action upon the notary’s official bond to recover the loss she had sustained and was awarded judgment…