FileNotFoundException is not really a corner case, it's all but unavoidable race. No matter how soon you open the file after verifying its existence, it could have gone away. And the only reasonable thing you can do in the face of it is route the message that the file is missing to the user one way or another, and possibly exit.

In that way, it makes sense for a top-level handler, such as at the main() routine or in the event loop in a GUI app, to be the one to handle it, and for all intermediates to pass it up. The fact that most meaningful applications do I/O at some level, means that almost the only routines that can be indicated not to throw this exception or a similar I/O exception, are functionally pure ones, or the ones that implement the aforementioned user notification.