Tested with spotBugs 3.1.7. The issue doesn't happen with Java 10. Example: > RCN | Nullcheck of fc at line 629 of value previously dereferenced in org.apache.kafka.common.utils.Utils.readFileAsString(String, Charset) ```java public static String readFileAsString(String path, Charset charset) throws IOException { try (FileChannel fc = FileChannel.open(Paths.get(path))) { MappedByteBuffer bb = fc.map(FileChannel.MapMode.READ_ONLY, 0, fc.size()); // line 629 return StandardCharsets.UTF_8.decode(bb).toString(); } } ```