Hertz will pay $168M over false theft claims

The rental car company Hertz Global Holdings has announced it would pay about $168 million to settle disputes with hundreds of customers who claim they were falsely accused of vehicle theft.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, occasionally recorded vehicles as stolen, even after customers had extended and paid for their rental periods, according to lawsuits.

Though Hertz initially contested these claims, the company has since acknowledged some wrongdoing.

In a statement Monday, Hertz said that the payout would resolve 364 pending claims relating to vehicle theft, bringing the vast majority of such claims to a conclusion.

The allegations 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 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 also operates Dollar Rent A Car and Thrifty Car Rental. 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.