The difference here is between the obligation (the debt owed by the bank, crystalized by the demand made on the bank) and the phyiscal description of that obligation (the piece of paper known as a “cheque”).
The obligation came due when the cheque was validly pesented. Thereafter, the physical cheque itself is no more than a piece of paper.
In short, when the customer validly presents a legitimate cheque to the bank, the bank is under an obligation to return him his money that they have borrowed. They certainly cannot use events that they themselves have manufactured (wrongly refusing to honour the cheque, throwing the customer in jail) as reasons why that obligation does not exist. Perhaps the bank could plead in its defence that they could not find the man to return him his money - though there is no evidence that they tried, or that if they had, it would have been difficult.
What you are all confused about is in thinking that it is the cheque - the physical bit of paper - that matters. It does not; it is the obligation represented by the cheque that matters.
This was my opinion - that people are concentrating on the wrong part of the story.
The initial concern over fraud was not the problem - a legitimate bank could easily react that way. The problem was how the bank reacted after it itself discovered that there was no fraud.
I’m not a banking lawyer - this isn’t, thankfully, my field at all. I’m certainly not speaking from any position of authority on this!
However, it is my understanding that the initial demand by the customer is determinative.
The demand was refused, but it was refused wrongly. It is similar to my analogy to asking for your money back from someone you have lent it to (the relationship between bank and customer in this situation is, at least in Canada, debtor-creditor).
There is no legal need for the customer to make subsequent demands, after the customer got his cheque back (though you’d expect that he would, as a matter of practicality). The demand is said to have “crystalized” when the cheque was validly presented (that is, become due and payable).
Thereafter, the bank went from being a debtor of the customer (that is, a person holding money owed to the customer under agreement as to terms) to being simply a person holding the customer’s money without legal excuse at all.
Under those circumstances - where you have someone elses’ money, they have asked for it back legitimately, and you have refused to give it back for reasons that, while understandable, were wrong - you are liable in tort for any damages that result from your failure to give the money back (the name of this tort is “conversion” - basically, dealing with someone elses’ property in a manner inconsistent with their rights to it).
Now it may be difficult to find the rightful owner but that is the bank’s problem - one it may be noted that they created. Given that the guy was in jail over the weekend, and so presumably wasn’t going anywhere, I find the argument that the bank could not have found him unpersuasive. How hard can it be to find a guy in jail?
Once again, do not be distracted by the fate of the physical cheque. It’s just evidence of the underlying obligation. The important thing is the obligation, not the cheque.
This. From what’s been said in this thread, I can understand the bank being suspicious on day one; but when the customer returned on day 2, after the bank had one whole day to check their own records, plus the ID ! of the customer, they could have either said “We need more time to verify this, so sorry, please come back in 7 days” which would have still prevented fraud if the check was not covered… or said “Yes, we looked at our own damn records, the check is legit, here’s your money”.
I can’t understand how the bank can call the police on day 2, after having the check in possession, and since it’s from their own bank, they can verify all records and accounts in hours, not weeks.
What makes me suspect racism is that so far I have not heard an explanation by the teller or the bank manager why they arrested the customer on day 2. I can quite understand that the behaviour plus the previous account info plus the quick departure on day 1 looked suspicious. But why the arrest on day 2, when there was no need for urgency?
Yes, bank people are only humans and can make mistakes - but the teller supposedly called her manager (or should have called, both of standard procedure and because when calling the police to a customer, a higher-up should know about it). So two people at least dropped the ball by not checking further, and if they have no explanation for the events on day 2 - then I will assume it’s racism and that’s why they are afraid to admit it.
If the teller messed up her protocols, if the bank manager was out of town so no higher-up could be consulted etc., surely that would have been used as explanation by now.
But the physical check was abandon by the person presenting it. There is a process with all transactions and that process was interrupted by the person presenting it. Because of that the check was taken by the police in the resulting confusion.
The check is proof of the underlying obligation. The bank did not lose it, it was taken by the police. It should have been returned to the man immediately upon clarification.
What it comes down to was whether the bank had a legitimate reason to question the check. If they did then the transaction was interrupted by the man and the process starts over.
I just can’t imagine going into a bank, presenting a check, them deciding its good, then me insisting I get to KEEP the check and still insisting they give me the money.
To me that what this “its valid when it presented” business implies.
Not to say the guy wasnt likely screwed a couple other ways by bad luck, bad circumstances of his own causeing, bad procedures, and just plain big bank/org inertia.
The “second fuck-up” aspect here (ie the bank’s failure to get the guy out of jail and immediately honor the check) doesn’t necessarily show that the bank had racist motivations any more than the first fuck-up does.
Many of you simply cannot accept that bad things can happen to black people without racism being involved. Also, what if the guy was white? White is a race. His mistreatment if he were white could also be due to racism, right?
I agree - without knowing more, you can only presume that the bad treatment was inspired by racism, you can’t know it. The weight of that presumption would be a matter of the surrounding circumstances, much of which we don’t know.
However, the second fuck-up is far more inexplicable than the first. The first is, in my opinon at least, somewhat understandable given the circumstances - a customer with a history of overdrawn account, who ducks out while the cheque was being processed.
The second fuck-up is just hard to explain. Once the cheque was found to be absolutely genuine, the bank ought to have moved heaven and earth to get the poor sod of a customer out of jail and get him his money. Indeed, as I’ve explained, a case could be made that (quite aside from customer-service issues) the bank made itself liable for damages by not doing so.
Inexplicably bad treatment is not of course necessarily racist - it could very well be the bank treats everyone badly in an even-handed sort of way. However, it is easy to see how it would raise some eyebrows - rightly or wrongly.
It’s easy to explain, it’s hard to justify. Maybe you’ve never worked for a large corporation. I have worked for a number of them all my life. I was involved with an event where something fell through the cracks and I spent the better part of a day making myself very unpopular. It involved a life and death situation that turned out well out of sheer luck but nobody wanted ownership of the followup (which is where I came in). It was truly something that fell between the cracks of the corporation. It literally took someone who cared and was willing to add frowny points to a career to make sure it didn’t happen again. It was all because someone accidentally pushed the wrong button.
Malthus, why is there an “it was racism” presumption in the first place? That’s the attitude I don’t understand. Seems to me that anyone wanting to prove any specific motivation for either fuck-up has the burden of proving that motivation.
I think it comes in this way: the presumption is that bad customer service is motivated by the busnesses’ perception of the customer. Perception could be either legitimate (history of overdrafts) or illegitimate (guy is Black = must be scum).
Where the bad service is explicable (and I think the first fuck-up is), the natural tendency is to assume that the fuck up was caused by the explicable perception (history of overdafts = fraud allegation).
Where the bad service is otherwise inexplicable (and I think the second fuck-up is), the natural tendency is to assume malice (guy is Black = he is scum = we can treat him like scum).
Again, this is just a tendency, a presumption. Without more, you can’t know what actually motivated anyone. Magiver makes a good point that big corporations operate in many cases by inertia and what may appear to be malice may be simply that - inertia.
I still don’t see how that figures. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
I’m not really sure that I buy that he was treated “like scum” after the bank realized their error. In hindsight, it’s crystal clear that they ought to have been more diligent about setting things straight - but they might easily have assumed that he was charged and released the same day, and that the phone call was sufficient to make sure that charges were dropped. “He’s out the door, he has his cheque, when he comes back in the door we are going to eat so much crow we’ll be shitting feathers for a month.” And then when he doesn’t return on Monday, assume he took the cheque to cash it somewhere else. I think this makes perfect sense from the point of view of individual employees, and it isn’t hard to understand how it might have happened without deciding that it must be racism at work.
If there were more cases where bank customers had been wrongfully arrested and some disparity in the demographics, that would be something else again - but everything that happened is perfectly explicable without a race element. Even if you feel that the employees’ perception of Mr. Njoku must have played a role in what they did or didn’t do after the error came to light, this would still be explicable based on his past history with the bank, rather than his complexion. He wrote a bunch of bad cheques, had his account closed, and failed to make good on his to debt to them for over a year. Ergo, scum.
Yet people still seem eager to act as though there must be racism at work.
Nice to see someone is making some hay out of the situation, but that really doesn’t seem very honest. Maybe if their pitch was “At WELLS-FARGO, we’ll still love you even if you kite a few checks…”
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that “… there must be racism at work” in any shape or form. I’m explaining why there would be a natural tendency to assume malice. Myself, I think stupidity or inertia is more likely. Of course racism remains possible. But it is not the crux of the guy’s legal complaint.
It doesn’t help that black people are disproportionately represented in prison populations. Anything that involves a black person going to jail when they didn’t commit a crime already has quite a lot in common with racist.
Reasonable doubt is not something human beings hold themselves to. There’s no great loss if we’re wrong and it isn’t racism. But there is a nice win if we are right, as we can say we told you so.
What is this - some sort of feedback loop, where every time the guy sets out to cash his cheque, he gets dicked around, only to receive an even-larger cheque as compensation, and then he sets out to cash that one … ?
However, it is easy to see how it would raise some eyebrows - rightly or wrongly.