Is a method thread-safe if the return value is declared/returned outside of a synchronized block?

Question

public Foo getFoo(){
    Foo foo = null;

    synchronized(fooList){
        if(fooList.size() > 0){
            foo = fooList.remove(0);
        }
    }

    return foo;
}

Since foo is declared outside of the synchronized block, does the potential exist of returning bad data?

Answer 1

Each thread instance calling getFoo() will have its own foo instance. Thus foo is thread safe and doesn't need synchronization.