I know that you should always check incoming params to a method for null. But what if I have this scenario with a try/catch referring to a local variable. Do I really need to check for null below? Because it's gonna catch it anyway if it's null and the next line of code tries to use the refundResponse variable:

    public string DoRefund(...)
    {
        try
        {
    ......
            string refundTransactionID = string.Empty;
    ......

            RefundTransactionResponseType refundResponse = transaction.DoRefund(...);

            if (refundResponse != null)
                refundTransactionID = refundResponse.RefundTransactionID;
    .....
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            LogError(ex);
            return ex.ToString();
        }
    }