Question
I live in New York. I was asked by a company to go to Chicago and do some work. The company bought me a round-trip ticket in my name, and I flew to Chicago. While in Chicago, I bumped into an old acquaintance who asked me how I am returning to New York. I told him I had a ticket. He offered me a ride on his private plane which I accepted, and I canceled my return flight. Since I canceled my flight, the airline gave me a credit which I can use to pay for future flights with this airline. Do I owe anything to the company since they paid for my return flight?
Answer
In order to answer your question, we must first analyze your situation. Since you were given a flight by your employer, you became the owner of the ticket. When you canceled your return ticket you received a credit. Your question is whether, since the reason your employer originally provided you with the ticket was because they assumed that you would need it, since in the end you did not need it, you are obligated to give them the credit or the monetary value of the credit you received.
Whenever there is a question concerning an obligation, one must consider what may be a possible source of the obligation and then decide if indeed there is an obligation. In your case the only possible reason you might be obligated to give the credit to your employer is because, perhaps, when he gave you the ticket it was on the condition that you use it to travel to and from the place you were asked to work, and you did not fulfill this condition.
In general (see Kiddushin 49B-50A and CM 207, 4), one must verbally express a condition in order for it to take effect. If a condition is not expressed, it is considered devorim shebaleiv which cannot legally undo an action. The only time a stipulation that has not been stated explicitly is legally effective is if it is an umdeno demuchach-a clear-cut condition unequivocally understood from the circumstances. Therefore, your question is whether it is certain that the ticket was given to you on condition that you would eventually use it to pay for your transportation to and from your work.
There is a situation in the Gemara that seems very similar to your situation. The case in the Mishna (Kesubos 101B) concerns a lady who had a daughter from a previous marriage, whom she supported. When she married a second husband, she stipulated that he must obligate himself to provide food for her daughter for the first five years after their marriage. He accepted the condition and they wed. Within those five years, her second husband divorced her and she then made the same deal with a third husband and they got married.
The Mishna rules that since the daughter only needed food from one person, the two men who had obligated themselves to provide the daughter with food must make an arrangement between themselves that one of them will provide the daughter with food and the other will give her the money it would have cost him to provide her with food.
We see from here that the obligation of the second husband to provide the daughter with food remains in place even though the girl whom he obligated himself to feed now has an alternative source of food. The reason is because when the second husband obligated himself to provide the daughter with food, he did not stipulate that his obligation will remain only as long as the girl needs his food or only as long as her mother remains his wife. Thus, we see that it is not obvious that when one obligates himself to provide someone with food, that the obligation is conditioned on its eventual use by the beneficiary.
A second place in the Gemara (Nozir 24B) from which we can draw proof concerns a married woman who saved up money by not using the entire food allowance that her husband gave her, in fulfillment of his obligation to feed her. The Gemara rules that this money is hers.
According to many poskim (See Pischei Teshuvo EH 70, 1), this is the law. Even those (Ramo 70, 3) who maintain that it is not the law, say so only because (see Tosafos in Nozir) there was a special enactment of the Rabbonon that in this situation the surplus funds (mosar mezonos) revert to the husband. However, if there had not been this special enactment, everyone agrees that the wife may keep the money even though she did not need it because she did not eat. Thus, again we see that if there was no specific explicit condition, we do not assume that if the money is not needed for the purpose it was granted, it must be returned.
A situation almost identical to yours was discussed by Rav Zalman Nechemia Goldberg (Umka Dedino 1, page 12). In his situation, an employer paid his employee the cost of a taxi to transport him to and from work. Rav Goldberg ruled, based on the first Gemara that was cited above, that even if the employee got a ride or took the bus, he may keep the money that was given to him to pay for a taxi. He writes, however, that the employee is not allowed to walk to work in order to save money if as a result he will come to work exhausted, since the reason the employer provided him with transportation was so that he would not arrive at work exhausted.
In another related situation the Yaskil Avdi (5, CM 29) was asked by a rov who was asked to lecture and was paid for his transportation and then got a ride. The Yaskil Avdi also ruled that the rov can keep the transportation allowance but he gave another reason. He said that those who asked him to lecture paid him, not for his actual travel but because it is not proper to ask someone to speak and not pay for his transportation. This could apply in your situation as well. When one asks someone to work in another city it is only proper to pay the cost of the employee’s transportation, whether he avails himself of the transportation or not. We note that even if in your particular case this was not the true reason they paid for your flight, this reason still serves to make it not an umdeno demuchach that they only paid your transportation on condition that you actually use it to pay for your flight.
It is important to note that according to many poskim the analysis is different if your employer had given you money and told you to use it for your carfare, or had given you a credit card to pay for your ticket, and your friend offered you a ride before you bought a ticket. In this case, many (e.g., Pischei Choshen 3, Chapter 11, Footnote 42) maintain that you could not charge your employer for the return trip because you never spent that money.
This type of case is discussed in the SA. One case discussed (CM 183, 9) is a person who gave someone fifty silver coins to settle his debts with his creditors. SA rules that if the agent was able to settle for twenty-five coins, the remaining twenty-five coins belong to the one who gave the money and not to the agent. The Shulchan Aruch Harav (Mechiro 13) explains that the reason is because the money given to the agent never left the possession of the one who gave him the money.
However, the Mekor Chaim (Siglowitz, res. 27) maintains that even in this case you could keep the money. The case he discussed is very similar to yours. He was asked concerning an employer who was obligated to pay his employee’s expenses on a business trip and along the way the employee’s friend invited him for a meal. He ruled that the employee may charge his employer what he would have spent for the meal, because he did eat a meal and was entitled to be reimbursed for the cost of the meal. The only reason the employee did not have to pay for the meal is because his friend gave him a present. Since the present was given to the employee and not the employer (who never would have received this present), the employee does not need to give it to his employer and thus he may charge the employer what it would have cost him. This is quite similar to the case of the girl who was entitled to receive food from two different men. If one follows this approach even if your employer had not given you a ticket but just agreed to reimburse you for your ticket you would be entitled to keep the money that it would have cost your employer.
Rav Moshe Feinstein (EH 1, 106) seems to agree with this approach. He discusses the woman who saved from her food allowance, where Tosafos asked why she can keep the remaining funds since there is an enactment that extra money left over from her food allocation reverts to the husband. He explains (based on a Yerushalmi that is cited by the Ran) that the rationale of this enactment is that when a woman finds a lost object her husband owns the found object. Rav Moshe classifies the wife’s savings as a lost object that was found by her. Thus, when an employee saves an expense, it is also as if he found a lost object. In contrast to a married woman, an employee owns objects he finds even during the time he is working for his employer. According to these opinions, even if you had been given money to buy yourself a ticket you could keep it.
We should note that one can easily deflect the proof that the stringent opinion brought from one who was given money to settle debts because in that case, as the Rav explained, the money never left the possession of the borrower, since the agent was not given the money for his personal use. However, when one gives his employee money to buy a ticket one can view it as money that was given to the employee for his use.
In conclusion: Since your employer did not stipulate that your ticket was only given on the condition that you actually use it for your transportation, you do not owe anything to your employer. Furthermore, according to many, even if your employer had just have given you money to pay for a ticket which you did not buy because your friend gave you a free ride, you could keep the money that your employer gave you.
