Hertz is facing dozens of lawsuits after customers alleged that the car rental company falsely reported their vehicles as stolen, resulting in some customers being arrested at gunpoint and jailed.
A total of 47 plaintiffs have come out against the company for the systemic issues in its theft reporting, according to CNN.
Specifically, the plaintiffs say that the rental car company failed to record rental extensions and track its inventory, falsely claimed that customers didn’t pay and didn’t correct erroneous police reports.
Those issues resulted in aggressive crackdowns by authorities, according to their complaints.
One driver was arrested while with her children at a gas station in March 2021. Police surrounded her with guns drawn, and she ended up spending nine days in jail.
Another woman spent 14 days in jail in 2020 after pulling her over for driving what they called a stolen car.
A Lyft driver using a Hertz rental lost his full-time job while being prosecuted for stealing the car. His case was dismissed two years later.
When speaking with CNBC in April, Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said that the company changed its policies to avoid repeating the mistaken arrests.
“To put context to it, if you look at the several 100 people impacted, we engage in 15 million transactions a year, this is 1/100 of a percent of those transactions,” Mr. Scherr told the outlet. “But again, it’s to make no excuse, one customer should not be affected by this.”
CNN reported that the lawsuits come after the Delaware Superior Court said that the cases could be pursued outside of bankruptcy court — which Hertz had filed for in May 2020 before the company emerged from it in July 2021.
The rental car company disagreed with the court’s ruling, but did say in a statement that its extending settlement offers to “dozens of claimants,” according to the network.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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