Opinion of the Court
The Special Master also failed to provide an adequate explanation for why bank liability relates in any meaningful way to the escheatment rules that the FDA adopts. That explanation seems crucial because the parties appear to agree that banks can be liable on money orders themselves, and, as previously explained, far from being excluded, money orders are expressly covered items in this statute. This incongruity makes it hard to conceive of the bank-liability attribute as the tipping point for whether a financial instrument qualifies as a “third party bank check” for FDA purposes. Similarly, if we were to agree with the Special Master that bank liability is dispositive of a “third party bank check” designation, then presumably any draft on which a bank is liable would fall outside of the FDA—a result that reads the term “third party” out of the statute.
The Special Master’s reasoning further fails to account for the nature of the Disputed Instruments, which do not appear to qualify as “bank checks,” at least not in the traditional sense of that word. According to the parties, a “bank check” is a check “drawn” on a bank’s own account or by a bank and on a bank (either the same bank or another).[1] That does not describe the Disputed Instruments, which are drawn on MoneyGram’s account, not a bank’s account.
Consequently, nothing in the reasoning provided by Delaware or the Special Master persuades us that the Disputed Instruments, which are otherwise “similar” to money orders for FDA purposes, should be deemed “third party bank checks” within the meaning of §2503.
- ↑ See L. Lawrence, Making Cashier’s Checks and Other Bank Checks Cost-Effective: A Plea for Revision of Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code, 64 Minn. L. Rev. 275, 278 (1980); G. Wallach, Negotiable Instruments: The Bank Customer’s Ability To Prevent Payment on Various Forms of Checks, 11 Ind. L. Rev. 579, 584 (1978).
checks, certified checks, or non-MoneyGram teller’s checks because the dispute before us does not concern those products.
