Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: work laptop stolen from car

Let's start with pure theory about what would happen if this matter went to court. When an employer entrusts property to an employee for the employee to use for work purposes, I think this is legally a "bailment for mutual benefit" and you, the bailee, are not the absolute insurer of the bailed property, i.e., you do not have an absolute duty to return the bailed property (the laptop) in its original condition. Your responsibility is to use "ordinary care" and that usually translates to avoiding negligence. It would probably be negligent to leave the laptop in plain sight in an unlocked car, and possibly negligent to leave it hidden from view in an unlocked car overnight in places where rummaging through unlocked cars is foreseeable, such as a motel parking lot.

It is usually up to the plaintiff to plead and prove negligence. However, in the law of bailments, the rule it otherwise. It would be up to you, the defendant, to show by a preponderance of the evidence that you had used ordinary care. You would have to establish that it was more likely than not that you had taken reasonable measures to protect the laptop form forseeable risks. Whether you could do so I cannot tell from the facts given.

OK, now back to the real world. In the real world, the employer is, first of all, going to assert any written or generally-understood policy it may have as trumping the general legal theory, and if you violated the policy, you're probably going to lose anyway, because the law of bailments is basically contract-derived and any publicized policy of the employer would be deemed to override the more general law, at least within reasonable bounds.

A second reason the employer's policy is going to prevail is that your employment is probably "at will," and if the employer gets ticked off, it will probably ask you if you want to fight over this or would rather keep your job, or your prospects of promotion. I'm not suggesting, and I don't know, whether such a threat or acting on such a threat is illegal or not, but it is a possibility.