bank won't return rejected ATM deposit check
Rapid Robert
AND REGULATIONS disclosure:
"Returned or refused deposits (or the legal
equivalent of the deposited item) will be returned to
you."
What is the "legal equivalent" of a paper check?
I went to the branch today about a tax refund check deposit that was
rejected, to ask when it would be returned to me. They said it wouldn't
be returned, but some kind of image would be provided and possibly some
instructions to correct an endorsement problem.
I no longer wish to deposit the check into this account; is there any
way I can get my original check back, or does the bank always win?
slide
You have hit Check 21. Here is a good Q&A about Check 21 and how it
affects not only your situation but others:
http://www.sovereignbank.com/business/planning/faq_check_21.asp
A legal equivalent of a check is a good image of one. In this situation,
the actual check most likely does not exist anymore having been shredded
after it was imaged. Therefore the bank can't return anything to you
even if it wished to.
I think your best bet is to follow the suggestions of the bank. Else you
can choose to abandon this check and request another one from the issuer
government. The government may levy a charge for processing the the stop
pay, however.
nos...@isp.com
a practical matter but which, in law analytical terms, are more
complex than he apparently supposes, Rapid Robert <spa...@nohow.com>
said and asked:
> Chase Bank in California states the following in their
> ACCOUNT RULES AND REGULATIONS disclosure:
>
> "Returned or refused deposits (or the legal
> equivalent of the deposited item) will be
> be returned to you."
>
> What is the "legal equivalent" of a paper check?
Unless the customer's agreement with the bank provides otherwise (your
posting leaves unclear whether it does or doesn't), the "legal
equivalent" of a paper check for the purposes about which you ask
generally would be an also paper but also could be an electronically
transmitted if also, if needed by the customer, readily printable on
paper instrument that is negotiable in a manner equivalent to what
should occur in the ordinary course of business if the original if
also properly endorsed check was presented for deposit or payment to
the same or to another comparable party.
This follows because (while this almost certainly would even if you
had not so agreed) the language you quote suggests that you agreed
that your relationship with the bank will be governed by the federal
so-called "Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act" (12 U.S.C.A. §§
5002, et seq., and that law's implementing regulations).
Putatively to vindicate asserted (mostly by banks) desirable
flexibility and innovation, etc., this law allows banks to "truncate"
a check, i.e., to remove an original paper check from the check
collection / return process and instead send to the relevant recipient
a substitute check or, if the relevant parties had so agreed,
information relating to the original check that would enable
whichever applies of the instrument's clearance or deposit, etc.
Pursuant to such statute, regulations, and the contract you quote in
part (which also are recognized directly or in effect by your state's
Commercial Code), to be a "legal equivalent" of an original check, the
substitute check or, if permitted by the relevant parties' agreement,
a functionally equivalent notice having the same effect as the
original check must both accurately represent all the information on
the front and back of the original as of when the original was
truncated and (to implement warranty provisions binding on banks which
opt to use this alternative to the return of an original check) also
say: "This is a legal copy of your check. You can use it the same way
you would use the original check."
(There have been cases re. which a statement in substance even if not
in exactly the same words as in the last two quoted sentences have
been sufficient for this purpose; although it probably would be proven
accurate if one was to guess that the bank with which you say you have
been dealing uses the exact language quoted above.)
And while you have not posted facts to the effect that you have been
or that it would be realistic for you to claim that you will be
measurably damaged by what you term the bank's rejection of the check
in question and the bank furnishing you with the "legal equivalent" of
the original you tried to negotiate instead of that document itself,
that law and implementing regulations provide for a cause of action if
damages result from a bank's breach of its (required) warranties that
the substitute check meets the requirements for "legal equivalence"
summarized above and (as apparently most relevant to you) that "[n]o
depositary bank, drawee, drawer, or indorser will receive presentment
or return of, or otherwise be charged for, the substitute check, the
original check, or a paper or electronic representation of the
substitute check or original check such that that person will be asked
to make a payment based on a check that it already has paid."
> I went to the branch today about a tax refund check
> deposit that was rejected, to ask when it would be
> returned to me. They said it wouldn't be returned,
> but some kind of image would be provided and possibly
> some instructions to correct an endorsement problem.
>
> I no longer wish to deposit the check into this account;
> is there any way I can get my original check back, or does
> the bank always win?
Your concluding eight words of the sentence that precedes this
question (i.e., "possibly . . . etc.") aggravates your analytical
ambiguity by you not making clear whether you use the word "possibly"
to indicate that did not actually say (i.e., said that it merely is
"possibl[e]") that it will provide you with instructions which, if
they are convenient and you follow them, will enable the original
check or the "legal equivalent" of that check to be negotiated in due
course or whether you use that word as if something of a synonym for
your state of mind (e.g., to indicate that you did not fully
understand whatever it was that the bank said about this subject).
These ambiguities in turn make your implied complaint in the form of a
mostly rhetorical (non)question -- i.e, that you believe it would
unfair for "the bank always [to] win" -- appear for at least the
following three reasons to be deflecting you from what probably are
more important practical considerations:
First and so far most basically as an analytical matter, (while you do
not make this sufficiently clear, either) you seem to suggest that the
problem to which you refer arose only from how you endorsed or from
how the bank's scanning and data processing devices and procedures
responded to how you endorsed the check in question. However, if so
and if, as you seem also to indicate, the bank promptly will provide
you with conveniently followable instructions which, if you do follow
them, would result in it honoring what it says is the "legal
equivalent" of the original it will have furnished to you if you were
to (re)present it for whichever you request of deposit in an
identified account or for payment in cash to you, then why you
evidently presume it would be sensible for you to act on the basis of
what you say merely is a "wish" (e.g., you don't say that there are
facts that make it necessary for you) to negotiate the check elsewhere
makes asking who should "win" an at best premature question (as,
indeed, you also do not even say that there is a present unresolved
controversy between you and that bank).
Second, you don't explain what you think you mean by "win" in any
event. "win" some sort of not yet even conceived of and perhaps
never to be commenced lawsuit or arbitration? "win" in the sense that
you would contend that the bank will not have accommodated your "wish"
notwithstanding that the bank promised to honor its agreement (and
anyway applicable law) to provide you with the "legal equivalent" of
the original check so that, if it does, you can use it the same way
you would use the original check?
Third, because you haven't posted the dollar amount of the check yet
that a perhaps reasonable interpretation of your posting is that the
dollar sum is not substantial, you deflect from more than you enable
addressing the cost compare with benefit question of what it probably
would cost you in time, effort, and dollars if you were to try to
"win" if by "win" you refer to some sort of so far only vaguely
speculative lawsuit (or other mode of dispute resolution if you had
agreed to such in your bank -with- customer agreement).
This is not to say that there is anything inherently unreasonable in
beginning a law related query by asking, as you do, what would be
"legal" _providing_, however, that the questioner understands not only
that when, as is also so here, the question arises from use of a term
of art in a contract ("the legal equivalent of the deposited item") it
is necessary to evaluate all the agreement's relevant provisions and
not, apparently as here, extracted and not fully contextual provisions
(including, if there are such, re. modes of claim making and dispute
determination) but also, and arguably more basically, as a _practical_
matter, that even a well-informed opinion about what is/isn't "legal"
when the, What is "legal"? question is posed in the context of a
potentially actual or actually pending unresolved dispute, is to
solicit an opinion of what, _if_ the parties act reasonably and also
_if_ they agree, they ought and _probably_ will do or, failing that,
is to solicit a prediction (that is to say: a guess) of what a court
or other relevant adjudicative body should and probably will rule
depending on lots of not now knowable "if"s.
Finally, re. whatever you presume "win" as you use that word above
means to you: You conflate banks more or less in general with the
particular bank with which you chose to deal, if, as you seem to
indicate, there is an "endorsement problem" (the nature of which you
do not specify) that requires "correction" which you indicate
(depending on what you mean by "possibly" above) the bank said it will
facilitate, there is no way to tell only from what you so far say
whether you _should_ "win" since (even though, as noted, it is at
least conjecturally possible that something that the bank should have
done but did not do was the predominant or maybe only cause of that
problem) you do not actually post any facts whatever on the basis of
which one reasonably can conclude that whatever is the particular
"endorsement problem" was not caused predominantly by you.
Robert Bonomi
Tell them you'll be happy to accept cash in lieu of the actual instrument.
<*evil* grin>
Rapid Robert
In the end, they did mail an image, a legal equivalent of a paper check,
which I was able to successfully deposit at another institution. So,
rather than being a legal matter of the bank "winning", it was just
another case of a bank with extremely poor customer service
(unreasonable delay between reversal of deposit and actually returning
the check) and customer communication (the branch staff couldn't clearly
explain the process).