Rental cars
are known for convenience. You can borrow a car for a couple of hours or weeks while yours is in the shop or while traveling. That convenience shouldn’t turn your vacation or business trip into a nightmare. However, that’s just the case for many people arrested for “stealing” Hertz
Cars. Jerry
is here to explain what happened, discuss the lawsuit, and talk about the affected lives.Hertz’s computer error leads to arrest
According to the lawsuit, Hertz files about 3,365 police reports yearly. These are filed against customers for “conversion,” which in law terms essentially means theft.
However, many of the plaintiffs claim this is false. For example, having receipts for extensions, they filed to rent the car longer or showing discrepancies between the information filed and their own, i.e., incorrect birthdays or driver's license numbers. Yet, despite these, the plaintiffs were still arrested.
Hertz claims this is a terrible combination of their “outdated vehicle tracking system,” their local and corporate level systems not communicating, and human and paperwork errors.
Hertz’s computer system at a corporate level doesn’t seem to communicate with the local computer systems to let them know if a car was stolen or if the information is outdated. This has led to the company not knowing where its inventory is, resulting in vehicles with “stolen tags” being rented out to customers.
The lawsuit against Hertz is coming at a bad time
In May 2020, Hertz filed for bankruptcy. This meant any cases against Hertz were stuck in bankruptcy court. Usually, this would be the people Hertz owed money to.
However, this time it also included plaintiffs claiming that Hertz had had them falsely arrested for stealing Hertz cars. While the bankruptcy lasted, Francis Alexander Malofiy’s, the plaintiff's lawyer, could only file claims in bankruptcy court, which didn’t allow for “big payouts” for the plaintiffs.
However, the bankruptcy ended in July 2021, and Hertz is proving to regain financial strength again, with stocks rising after rejoining the Nasdaq.
This led to the cases against Hertz for customers and non-customers (whose identities were stolen) to move their cases out of bankruptcy court and into federal court, specifically the Delaware Superior Court.
Part of the reason for this, beyond the financial difference, is that Hertz’s police reports for their stolen cars take a payment issue, considered a civil case, and make it a criminal case by putting warrants out for their customer's arrest for grand theft and conversion.
Their CEO, Stephen Scherr, has said the errors in their system have affected hundreds of people, and they’re implementing new policies to prevent this from happening. Hertz is offering claimants settlements but on a case-by-case basis.
People versus Hertz
Plaintiffs from across the United States have joined Francis Alexander Malofiy’s lawsuit against Hertz, and some of their stories can be found on his website, #TruthHertz
. Multiple people have described being swarmed by police, held at gunpoint, and falsely imprisoned. This has included regular Hertz customers, customers with membership and who use the company frequently, and a few cases of people whose identities were stolen and have never used Hertz.
Michelle Jones, a gold club member at Hertz alleges she extended her Hertz rental for two months, paid for the car, returned the vehicle, and then due to a computer system error was pulled over by the police months later with a warrant out for her arrest.
Hertz had claimed she’d stolen the car she’d returned. She was up against a felony for the stolen car and told to take a plea for a misdemeanor.
Shontrell Higgs rented a car, filed for an extension, and was pulled over and arrested because Hertz alleges she didn’t properly rent the vehicle or file the extension. Due to graduate the following month from nursing school, she sat in jail without access to a lawyer for 37 days.
She was told if she didn’t plea she’d stay in prison for an additional four months before receiving a hearing. She ended up spending 171 days in jail total, during which time she missed her graduation, lost her nursing job, and suffered a miscarriage.
These are just a few stories and people in the lawsuit. Across the board, plaintiffs comment on the trauma they experienced, some saying they’re scared to go outside, others that they cannot sleep, and their lives disrupted without an apology.
MORE: Car rental prices have soared since 2019
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