Hertz Global Holdings, Inc., a rental car company, made an announcement on Monday that it would pay approximately $168 million to settle disputes with hundreds of customers who claim that they were falsely accused of stealing vehicles from Hertz. These customers rented cars from Hertz.
According to lawsuits filed on behalf of customers across the country, the company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, occasionally recorded certain vehicles as stolen, even after customers had extended and paid for their rental periods. This sometimes led to terrifying run-ins with the authorities, and even jail time in some cases.
Despite the fact that Hertz initially denied these allegations, the company has since brought on a new chief executive and admitted that some of its employees engaged in unethical behavior. Hertz said in a statement released on Monday that the payout would resolve 364 pending claims relating to vehicle theft. This would bring the majority of claims relating to vehicle theft to a successful conclusion.
The allegations include ones from customers who say they were arrested at gunpoint, thrown in jail, or prosecuted after the company claimed they had stolen one of its vehicles. The allegations were reported by CBS News last year, and the details of the allegations were detailed in court documents. Hertz made the revelation that it files thousands of police reports annually after a judge from the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware ruled in February that the company was required to make public the number of people against whom it filed complaints.
Dollar Rent A Car, Inc. and Thrifty Rent-A-Car System, LLC are both rental car companies that are run by Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. These businesses are also named as defendants in the filings filed with the court.
According to a lawsuit that was submitted in August to the Superior Court in Delaware, the majority of the false reports of theft fell into one of two categories: those in which Hertz claimed a car was overdue, and those in which the company misplaced a car. The lawsuit was filed against Hertz. The lawsuit states that the second type of incident occurred when the company sometimes classified as stolen automobiles that had in fact been rented out to customers or were sitting on its lots. The lawsuit also states that this type of incident occurred.
A second lawsuit was filed in the same court in 2020 alleging that a woman was arrested in April 2019 in Broward County, Florida, after extending and paying for her Hertz rental car. According to the lawsuit, she was incarcerated for a total of 37 days during which time she was cut off from her fiance and their two children, prevented from attending her graduation ceremony for nursing school, and discovered that she was expecting.
According to the court documents, another individual who turned himself in to the authorities in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 2018, after learning that there was a warrant for his arrest on charges that he stole a Hertz car, had in fact paid for and returned the vehicle. This man was aware that there was a warrant for his arrest after learning that there was a warrant for his arrest. According to the documents, he was arrested once more after missing a hearing date, and he was held in jail for six and a half months.
On Monday evening, attempts to get in touch with attorneys who were representing the plaintiffs in the case were unsuccessful.
Hertz stated on Monday that it was confident it would be able to recover a “meaningful portion” of the settlement amount from its insurance carriers and that the $168 million would be paid by the time the year came to a close.
