Legal Question in Business Law in California

Sure, you can sue, but a well-informed judge would probably give judgment for the defendant bank. Banks are given discretion whether to honor or refuse to honor checks that are more than six months old. You would have to plead and prove that honoring the 5-year-old check was an abuse of the bank's discretion. The applicable law is Commercial Code section 4404, which says, "A bank is under no obligation to a customer having a checking account to pay a check, other than a certified check, which is presented more than six months after its date, but it may charge its customer's account for a payment made thereafter in good faith." Commentary on Comm'l. Code 4404 suggests that most banks would refuse to honor a stale check, but if they do so, it is within their discretion so long as they don't honor stale checks recklessly or in bad faith. "Bad faith" might be shown if the bank accepted a check that created an overdraft, or that was unusually large for the account it was drawn on.