This probably exists.
Imagine a language with a fairly rich case system (say 6+), and with next to no difference between what animates and inanimates are marked for. Basically, a completely symmetrical case system (such languages do exist), and next to no traces of a noun class system. (Except in the bit we will come to in a moment).
The personal pronouns may be an exception - with fewer or more cases than the regular nouns, but those are not what we'll look at now. Instead, let's have the interrogative pronouns 'who' and 'what' display some weird behaviors: both entirely lack case marking.
'Who' and 'what' also are the only place in which an animate-inanimate distinction is made in the language. Due to the fairly restricted circumstance in which the animate-inanimate distinction appears, it's not particularly fixed - animals sometimes fall on the animate side, sometimes not, and at times even greater variation happens.
Due to the omission of case marking on these pronouns, they have their own tendencies regarding what cases can be implicitly assumed. These are, of course, statistical tendencies.
Who is more often subject, genitive or beneficiary than what is. What is more often an object. Of course, in the absence of a nominative subject, either of them can be assumed to function as a subject. What also tends to be parsed as instrumental (and thus also as 'how').
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