Rancher Doesn’t Want To Pay The Neighbor What The Court Ordered, So He Decided To Make Depositing The Check Extra Difficult By Using A Cow
by Jayne Elliott
What would you do if you worked at a bank and someone came in to deposit a check but the check was quite unusual.
We’re talking so unusual that it’s not even on a piece of paper.
In today’s story, one woman had a very strange experience while working at a bank, and it all has to do with a rancher, the rancher’s neighbor and a cow.
Let’s see how the story unfolds.
A very expensive check
This malicious compliance is not my own.
It was related to me by my mother many decades ago, but it is also not hers.
She just got to play her part in the story.
But since she died decades before Reddit existed for her to share it with all you wonderful people, I’ll pass it on for her.
There was a strange check at the bank.
This is a case of an intended malicious compliance being countered by an even more malicious compliance.
My mother is at this time a manager in the central processing office of a now defunct major regional bank — easily the largest bank in our region back in the day.
She receives a rather odd check for processing, and refuses to run it until she has the full story on what is happening.
The money was due to a dispute between ranchers.
So here’s what she learns:
A rancher has been in a land dispute with one of his neighbors, and it has not gone amicably.
We are not privy to the exact nature of the issue, but it seems to have something to do with water rights.
Either way, it ends up in court.
And after a long, hard fought battle of legal wills, the rancher loses and is ordered to pay a certain amount of damages to his neighbor by a certain date.
A cow would certainly be an unusual check to process!
Well, that is not a happy thing for the rancher.
So he decides that while he must pay, there is absolutely nothing in the court order that says he has to make it easy on his adversary.
Malicious compliance engaged.
He shaves a spot on the rump of one of his cows, and carefully writes out a check for the full amount of the court ordered damages on the skin of the bovine.
He then has one of his trucks deliver the cow to his neighbor to settle the account.
A live chewing, pooping cow!
The neighbor decided to counter with his own malicious compliance.
After checking with the bank, the neighbor concludes that it is perfectly legal for the rancher to write a check on anything and the rancher makes it perfectly clear that this is the only way he intends to settle the debt.
But just like folks who decide to settle an annoying bill with thousands of coins sometimes find themselves victims of their own malicious intent, the neighbor’s malicious compliance trumps the rancher’s.
The neighbor loads the cow onto one of his own trucks, and takes it to the rancher’s bank – the bank of issuance – and cashes it against a cashier’s check made out to him for the same amount.
This he then deposits at his own bank with no difficulty or challenge.
Yes, his mom had to process the cow check.
Meanwhile, the rancher’s bank has to order a truck and driver to deliver the cow-check to it’s central processing office, several hours drive away.
This is where my mother comes into the story.
She has to cancel the check and process it.
(She uses a paper substitute to run through the computer system for it, just like they do for any checks that come in that are too badly wrinkled or damaged to run safely through the system.)
The rancher was stuck paying extra fees.
After the cow-check has been properly processed, and the money deducted from the rancher’s account, she then opts to not store the check with his other cancelled checks to return with his monthly statement, but instead orders it returned immediately to the rancher.
And then, after the dust settles, the real fall-out of the neighbor’s malicious compliance is felt.
Since the cow-check involves a great deal of special handling at the bank’s expense, the bank assesses appropriate fees that more than cover the expenses in processing it.
If the neighbor cashes it at his own bank, he gets to pay those fees.
But since he cashes it at the rancher’s bank, the rancher now gets to pay what amounts to an additional 25% fee on top of the court ordered settlement.
The neighbor won the battle.
The only cost to the neighbor was ten miles of gas for the round trip to the bank — a trip he routinely makes anyway — and the time spent getting the bank to verify that the cow-check is a legitimate instrument that can be cashed.
When telling me this story, my mother tells me it is the most expensive check she ever processed.
A cow-check – wow! That’s a new one!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
I feel bad for the cow too.
This reader would’ve eaten the cow.
This person shared a memory from banks in the rural US.
This is a good question.
This reader will share the story.
How did the rancher even come up with this crazy idea?
He must have been in rare form that day.
If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.

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