Overriding the java equals() method - not working?

Question

I ran into an interesting (and very frustrating) issue with the equals() method today which caused what I thought to be a well tested class to crash and cause a

Answer 1

recordId is property of the object

@Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (this == obj)
            return true;
        if (obj == null)
            return false;
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
            return false;
        Nai_record other = (Nai_record) obj;
        if (recordId == null) {
            if (other.recordId != null)
                return false;
        } else if (!recordId.equals(other.recordId))
            return false;
        return true;
    }