A Detective's Request, a Missing Stamp, and a Journal Line Left Blank
An Oregon notary has kept a paper journal for three years, covering roughly 400 entries. In one week three things happen. First, a city police detective emails asking for copies of every journal entry from the past 14 months relating to a named signer, adding that 'it will speed things up if you just send the whole book.' Second, she realizes her official stamp was left in a rental car five days ago and has not been used since. Third, a signer at yesterday's appointment refused to sign the journal line, told her to 'just skip it,' and she performed the acknowledgment anyway without writing anything about it. She is also planning to scan the journal, shred the paper, and keep the scans in her personal cloud account.
1. How should the notary respond to the detective's request?
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A notary journal is not a public record. The notary's default duty is confidentiality; she should not hand over the book, and she should not send more than is actually requested.
Steps:
- Confirm authority. Ask for the request in writing and determine whether it is a subpoena, a court order, or a voluntary request. A voluntary request can be declined or narrowed; a subpoena must be answered in the manner it specifies, which may mean producing copies or appearing with the journal.
- Scope the production. If compelled, produce only the entries responsive to the named signer and time window - not all 400 entries. Other signers' personal identifiers are not the detective's business.
- Produce copies, retain the original. The journal is the notary's required record and must remain in her custody and control.
- Document the disclosure - date, requester, what was produced - so the journal's chain of custody is clear.
- Consult counsel or the Secretary of State's office before producing anything if the demand is unclear or overbroad.
Sending the whole book 'to be helpful' is the error the scenario is testing.
2. What must the notary do about the stamp left in the rental car?
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Treat it as a lost seal, not an inconvenience.
- Stop using any impression from that stamp and do not continue notarizing with a replacement until the replacement is in hand; she cannot notarize without the official stamp.
- Report the loss to the rental company, to local police (for a report number), and to the Secretary of State as its rules require.
- Obtain a new stamp with her correct commissioned name, commission number, and expiration date.
- Record the loss date in the journal so there is a documented boundary. Any document bearing an impression from the old stamp after that date is presumptively suspect.
- Review her records: confirm no act was performed between the loss and the discovery, and be prepared to explain the gap if a document surfaces later with the old impression.
The real exposure is forged documents stamped by whoever found it; the report and journal note are what let her defend her own acts.
3. What should have happened when the signer refused to sign the journal, and how should the notary fix the digitization plan?
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The journal entry is the notary's obligation, not the signer's. A signer's refusal does not excuse the notary from recording the act.
What should have happened:
- Complete the entry in full: date, signer name, ID details, type of act, document description.
- Note in the entry 'signer declined to sign journal.'
- Decide policy in advance: many notaries refuse to perform the act if the signer will not sign, because the unsigned entry weakens its evidentiary value. Either choice is defensible; silently leaving the entry blank is not.
Fixing the gap now: make the entry immediately, contemporaneous as possible, and mark it as completed after the fact with the reason. Do not backdate it to look contemporaneous.
Digitization plan is wrong as described:
- Scans supplement a journal; they do not replace the required original record during the retention period.
- Shredding the paper destroys the original and undermines authentication.
- A personal cloud account is not secure, access-controlled storage for records containing signers' identifiers.
Correct approach: keep the original journal in secure custody, retain it as long as Oregon requires (and confirm whether it must be surrendered to the state at the end of the commission), and use encrypted backup storage only as a supplement.