Terminated employee will not help the company locate its truck

Question

Consider the following hypothetical situation. Joe is an employee of Quality trucking company. Joe drives a tractor trailer for the company. The tractor trailer is owned by the company.

The company is unhappy with Joe as an employee. One day, while driving the company truck, Joe gets a phone call from his boss saying that he is terminated immediately. Joe says "Okay" and hangs up the phone". He then legally parks the company truck and takes an uber home. The trailer has a significant amount of customer merchandise in it that Joe was delivering.

One hour later, Joe's boss calls him and asks Joe where the truck is. Joe does not answer the phone. The company does not know where the truck is. Can the company require Joe to tell them where the truck is?

Answer 1

united-states

Generally, the trucking company ought to have a fairly specific idea about where the truck is located and law enforcement might help them find an abandoned truck, based upon the planned itinerary of the truck and the time of the call. And, in real life, this issue does not come up because these kinds of trucks have GPS trackers (much to the distaste of the drivers who feel that they are micromanaged as a result). Often the freight customer will also have GPS tracking chips in their merchandise. The employer could simply dispatch some private individual to locate and retrieve it by searching along its anticipated route.

It is not obvious that Joe violates any legal duty by not responding to the employer's post-termination calls, especially one an hour later rather than mere moments later. Joe has no duty to his former employer to even keep a phone on his person. There isn't a general legal duty to respond to phone calls from anyone, including a former employer. Joe doesn't even know what the former employer was calling to ask. Joe had every right to block all calls from the employer's number once he was fired if he wanted to do so.

A judge or jury in later litigation might also have little sympathy for a company that unilaterally fires a trucker (without any cause identified in the question) and orders him to abandon the truck, in the middle of a trip, without asking where the truck is first, when Joe does what he was asked to do.

It is conceivable that if there was later litigation, that a subpoena could be issued to Joe to testify about where he left the truck, but that would take weeks, by which time it would be a moot point.

If law enforcement were notified of an abandoned truck and asked Joe about it, he might be obligated to tell them, in at least some states, but law enforcement might have a difficult time locating Joe promptly if he was not fired close to home.

Answer 2

germany

Any company property the employee had in their possession is still company property. This is no different for laptops, cars or trucks.

The former employee owes the former employer a way to recover their property (§ 667 BGB). Normally, that is arranging pickup at the employee's home for a laptop, but being available for someone from the employer to pick up any movable goods (keys, papers) that are needed and telling them the location of their property if publicly accessible is enough. This assumes the property was left there for a good reason, not moved away out of spite.

Reasonable accommodations have to be made: you don't have to be available at weird hours for pickup, but telling someone the location of a truck can easily be a phone call or email, so compared to actual physical pickup one has to plan and arrange, there is no reason not to tell the former employer immediately.

It might even be a legal nightmare to actually drive the truck after officially being fired. So parking it at the nearest legal spot after being fired effectively immediate is the only appropriate action here.

If the company had wanted the truck returned, they should have fired the worker after they returned the truck or fired them with a notice period big enough that they can return the truck. "Your last day is Friday, please used the remaining days to return the truck to the logistics center in Citytown" would have been perfectly fine.

Please note that this is not a realistic scenario in Germany either way, because terminating an employee requires the notice to be in writing, just like the original contract. You cannot legally fire someone over the phone or via email. With all the EU regulations on digital signatures on contracts that might change for email, but phone does not produce a paper trail and will not be legally valid any time soon.

Answer 3

The ex-employee is in breach of their contract

australia

Some terms of a contract survive its termination and breach of these may be grounds for damages or the seeking of an injunction - in this case, ordering the employee to disclose the location of the truck.

While there may (perhaps should) be an explicit term requiring ex-employees to return company property, it’s not strictly necessary.

At common law, employees owe a duty of fidelity to their employer and this continues after termination to the extent that it relates to their employment. Failing to tell the employer where the truck is is a breach of this duty.

Answer 4

united-kingdom

I think this falls into the category of "involuntary bailment".

Rather than considering exactly what the former employee must do, it's more appropriate firstly to consider what they mustn't do: they mustn't abandon or recklessly endanger the vehicle in their possession.

So the vehicle remains under their control.

And because the vehicle is under their control, they must return the vehicle on demand, or endeavour to return the vehicle to the owner. To not do so could be theft.

In the absence of the employment relationship, the efforts the former employee must take are not onerous (for example, there is no obligation to drive the truck on from an already sensible parking place) and are not determined by how urgently the former employer would wish to recover the vehicle, but wilful obstruction of the employer's efforts, or knowingly allowing a perishable load to perish whilst delaying contact, may be unlawful.