Hertz to Pay $168 Million to Customers Who Say They Were Falsely Accused of Auto Theft

The allegations, reported last year by CBS News, and detailed in court documents, 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. In February, after a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Delaware ruled that Hertz must make public the number of people it filed complaints against, the company revealed it was filing thousands of police reports each year.

Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. also operates Dollar Rent A Car, Inc., and Thrifty Rent-A-Car System, LLC. Those companies are also listed as defendants in court documents.

According to a lawsuit filed in August in Superior Court in Delaware, the false reports of theft most often fell into two categories: ones in which Hertz claimed a car was overdue, and those in which the company misplaced a car. According to the lawsuit, the latter type of case happened when the company sometimes classified cars as stolen that had in fact been rented out to customers, or were sitting on its lots.

“In all cases, Hertz’s goal is to protect its profits and cut its costs, even if it knows their own customers will lose their liberty and freedom as a result,” the lawsuit said, adding that the unsuspecting drivers were “prosecuted as if they truly committed Grand Theft Auto.”

According to another lawsuit filed in the same court in 2020, a woman was arrested in April 2019 in Broward County, Fla., after extending and paying for her Hertz rental car. She spent 37 days in jail, where she was separated from her fiancé and two children, missed her nursing school graduation and discovered she was pregnant, according to the suit.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/business/hertz-theft-settlement.html