Is an employee responsible for damage to their employer's laptop due to wear and tear? [closed]

Question

The key cap of my employer's laptop popped off. If I report it to my employer, am I responsible for the cost of fixing the damage?

I know that large companies have It departments for dealing with issues like this but I work for a startup and I'm in my notice period, and I'm concerned they'll try to make me pay for it even though it happened due to being a used laptop and experiencing wear and tear.

I already declined an offer from my boss to buy the laptop so I think he wants to recoup the cost of the laptop.

Answer 1

The key cap of my employer's laptop popped off. If I report it to my employer, am I responsible for the cost of fixing the damage?

No. You are not responsible.

Try not to anticipate problems. Report the issue simply as a matter of fact and ask what should be done.

Answer 2

No, making employees liable for damages to work equipment is very difficult in Germany. It's pretty much impossible unless the employer can prove that the employee acted grossly negligent or maliciously.

But that doesn't necessarily stop them from trying. Inexperienced employers (like most startups) might try because they don't know better. Experienced employers dealing with lowly educated employees might also try occasionally because they hope their employees don't know better.

In that case, the escalation path I would recommend is:

1. Googling relevant court cases and showing them to the one making the demand
2. Contacting the Betriebsrat
3. Contacting your trade union
4. Contacting a lawyer

Answer 3

The general rule in most places is so long as the wear and tear is reasonable, then it's the Employers problem.

For example - I have a laptop and over time (due to lots of use) the mousepad stops working - then it's my Employers problem.

The exception to this is when the wear and tear is due to non-work related issues or negligence.

For example - I take my laptop to my local school fair, to play music for a dance - someone spills juice on it - This is my problem, since I wasn't using it for Work related purposes.

Or - I'm at home, I've left my work laptop on the floor and my toddler gets a hold of it and starts bashing it with a wooden hammer - this is my problem since I was being negligent with it.

Answer 4

As pointed out in other answers, wear and tear of work equipment is generally the employer's problem. In germany specifically, the law is even more in the employee's favor: In general, employees are only (fully) liable for gross negligence.

It is well-established by court precedent that for all activities that are part of an employee's duty, the employee is not liable for damages, even if the employee was negligent - unless the employee was significantly negligent (or acted with malice). The German Wikipedia article on Arbeitnehmerhaftung explains this in more detail. Even in case of significant negligence, liability is often limited.

Additionally, in your case it is not even clear you caused the damage (as the laptop is used, and may have been damaged by the previous user). So to make you liable, your employer would need to establish that

• you actually damaged the laptop, and
• you did so out of negligence (i.e. it was not just regular wear)

No employer is going to bother with that, they will just eat the cost.

---

To address your specific concerns:

I know that large companies have It departments for dealing with issues like this but I work for a startup and I'm in my notice period, and I'm concerned they'll try to make me pay for it [...]

Try not to worry about problems before they become relevant :-). If your company does not have a dedicated IT department, they must still be someone who is responsible for the equipment. Find out who that is, talk to them, and hear what they say.

I already declined an offer from my boss to buy the laptop so I think he wants to recoup the cost of the laptop.

While that is possible, it does seem rather far-fetched - a) a used laptop is not worth a lot, so there is not a lot to "recoup" anyway, and b) your boss will not be able to claim the full cost of the laptop if only one key is damaged.

Also, it is equally possible your boss just wanted to do you a favor by offering you a laptop for little money.

While it is good to try to anticipate problems, try to not assume the worst :-).

Answer 5

From a combination of legal and practical hurdles, an employee is rarely liable financially for anything but wilful damage.

Legally, a duty to take reasonable care of goods exists, but reasonable care isn't synonymous with the absence of damage to the goods, and the standard of reasonable care to which an employee will be held is low and basically amounts to not doing anything deliberate to damage the goods.

The reason this policy exists is twofold.

Firstly, employees are often in charge of goods whose value is completely disproportionate to the employee's own resources, and the courts are unwilling to get involved in an overall arrangement which essentially consists of employers handing out valuable and delicate goods to paupers, and then trying to squeeze those paupers dry when something accidentally goes wrong.

Secondly, the employer has relatively arbitrary power to compel expensive goods to be handled and used in circumstances where risks are obviously non-zero, including in circumstances where it may make overall sense for the employer to take the risk (given the value of the work done, and the potential to pool many risks), but it wouldn't make sense for the employee to take that risk. The employee usually isn't in a position to evaluate and manage the risk, or to decide whether to accept the risk. For this reason, courts don't tend to consider the employee as the appropriate party to bear the risk.

Practically, an employer may have considerable difficulty proving the circumstances in which damage occurred - often, the only evidence may be from the employee who the employer is alleging caused the damage.

Conclusion

In terms of a direct answer to the question, no, employees are certainly not liable for "wear and tear".

But employees are also not generally liable for any accidental damage, even if it isn't wear and tear. Whatever the employer gets back, is what it is.

It would be for a judge to decide whether particular circumstances fell below the standard of the employee's duty to take reasonable care of the employer's goods, but that is a very low standard.