If an employee is signed off from work by a doctor and is currently holding equipment owned by either his employer or one of his employer's customers, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to ask for this equipment back (for example, if it needs to be repaired and this is delaying it, thus making the employer look bad and failing SLAs with the customer).
Is it legally acceptable to contact the employee to ask to arrange to collect it? By a similar token, where does the employer stand with other company owned equipment he is in posession of, such as his laptop, mobile phone or his company car (which is leased by the company)?