out of your control
If the property was issued to you, then it is your responsibility to return it. Consider what you said about out of your control. You lost the item...you gave them to another co-worker...what do you mean? I was contracted to a company, who said that I had some of their property. The company I worked for was holding my pay till I returned it. The company I worked for had no claim to that porperty, therefore could not hold my pay. As it turned out, the property was out of my control. I did not have it and they new it, so I challenged them to prove it in a court of law. I got my pay and the company I was working at backed off.