Liability After a Retailer Cashes a Paycheck That Is Returned

Attorney Answer

You very likely owe the retailer the money back as a civil matter — but their threat to prosecute is not automatic, and criminal liability turns on what you knew when you handed the check over, not on the fact that it bounced.

Start with the danger the usual advice misses. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-128 does not reach only the person who wrote the check. Under subsection (a)(1), a drawer or representative drawer is guilty who issues a check knowing there are insufficient funds, intending or believing payment will be refused, and payment is refused. But under subsection (a)(2), a person is also guilty who passes a check knowing that the drawer does not then have sufficient funds, intending or believing payment will be refused, and payment is refused. Cashing someone else's paycheck is passing it. So "I only cashed it, I didn't write it" is not by itself a defense. The line is your knowledge and intent at the moment you passed it. If you had no reason to believe your employer's check would be refused — and most people cashing their own paycheck do not — that element is missing, and it is the state's burden to prove otherwise.

The statutory presumptions run against the person who wrote the check, not you. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-128(b), an issuer is presumed to have known the check would not be paid if he had no account, or if payment was refused for insufficient funds within thirty days of issue and he failed to make good within eight days after notice of the refusal. Grading runs from a class C misdemeanor for a check of $500 or less up to a class D felony for one over $2,000.

On the civil side, the statute people usually point to does not apply to you. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-565a, titled "Liability of drawer for dishonored check," runs against the drawer — the person who wrote it. That is your employer. Its damages are capped rather than multiplied: under subsections (b) and (c), the lesser of the face amount or $400 where the drawer had insufficient funds, or the lesser of the face amount or $750 where the drawer had no account, and under subsection (e) those damages are available only to a payee who posts or gives conspicuous public notice of them. A retailer's civil claim against someone who cashed and indorsed a third party's check does not rest on that section at all; it rests on the liability an indorser takes on under Connecticut's commercial code when a check is dishonored. Practically, that usually means you have to make the retailer whole and then pursue your employer.

One older decision shows where the real criminal exposure sits. In State v. Pilch, 35 Conn. Supp. 536 (Super. Ct., App. Sess. 1977) — an Appellate Session decision, so persuasive rather than binding — a corporate officer who signed a company check and pleaded guilty under § 53a-128 could be ordered personally to pay restitution in the face amount as a condition of probation. He was a representative drawer within Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-118(a)(10), and the corporate form did not shield him. If your employer knowingly issued a paycheck that would not clear, the person who signed it is the one with genuine § 53a-128 exposure.

What you can do

1. Get the retailer's reason in writing before you pay or admit anything. Was the check returned for insufficient funds, a closed account, a stop payment, or as a forgery? Those answers point in completely different directions. 2. Say nothing about what you knew, beyond the truth stated once and briefly: you cashed your own paycheck and had no reason to think it would not clear. Do not sign a statement they draft for you. 3. Demand payment from your employer in writing, immediately. A dishonored paycheck does not discharge the obligation to pay you your wages. 4. File a wage complaint with the Connecticut Department of Labor, Wage and Workplace Standards Division. That is a free process and it puts pressure where it belongs. 5. Find out who signed the check. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-128 and State v. Pilch, a signing officer does not escape by pointing at the company. 6. Expect to have to make the retailer whole as the indorser, and try to negotiate a payment schedule in writing rather than a lump sum. Get any agreement, and any release, in writing before you pay. 7. If police contact you, or if the retailer files a complaint, get a lawyer before you speak. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-128(a)(2) is why this is not a conversation to have alone.