Court Opinion

ID: 9633499
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:49:33.529834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:36.528650
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
My inability to join the majority is readily explained. Although I was not sitting with the Court when this case was argued orally, and hence did not participate in the opinion issued October 2, 1990, after the Court granted a rehearing I was fully informed as to the circumstances and facts by Justice Johnson’s opinion. Justice Johnson’s opinion was easily read, being succinct and to the point, especially when he portrayed a fraudulent scheme which would net the perpetrator of the scheme $6500 in gold coin, to the detriment of someone else. Earlier, the court upheld the magistrate trial court in its conclusion that Valley Bank would swallow the loss. Today, after reconsideration by the other Justices, but a first consideration on my part, I am of the view that the Bank should stand the loss.
To my mind it is incomprehensible that someone could acquire stolen property, peddle it to an unsuspecting average person in return for a personal check made out to whatever name had been assumed, and blithely walk into and out of any bank with a cashier’s check in his pocket acquired in exchange for the average person’s check, or any business person’s check, on the pretext that some company for whom the perpetrator claims to work desires that he obtain cashier’s checks for some hocus-pocus reason. Additionally, based on my fifty years of perception as to the care customarily taken by banks in customer transactions, the testimony of the bank operations officer as to how loosely this transaction was conducted, persuades me that such opinion testimony was incredible and that the average person needs to be mindful of their bank's protection procedures, or lack thereof. Noting the direction the majority goes, however, I commend it for its moderation in electing to remand to the trial court for reconsideration, and not in out-and-out reversing in favor of the bank.