(NewsNation) — Hertz is dealing with another lawsuit after dozens of customers sued the rental car giant, claiming they were wrongly arrested and accused of stealing cars they rented.
NewsNation previously reported on the nightmare situations that led customers to sue Hertz last year. More than 200 customers were suing the rental car giant for mental and emotional damages after they say they were falsely arrested, and even jailed, after Hertz filed police reports saying the cars they rented were stolen. Last month, NewsNation’s Rich McHugh confirmed Hertz was offering customers settlements. The new lawsuit is based off those previous claims.
The customers say the cars were legitimately rented and many have had the charges removed, but not before spending time in jail in some cases, including Julius Burnside.
Burnside is part of one of the lawsuits against Hertz.
“I felt it was a joke..like you’re telling me I got a warrant for my arrest for something I paid for. That’s not possible,” Burnside told NewsNation last year.
“This has been going on for two years. This latest lawsuit is 47 of the claimants have been given the green light to take their cases out of the bankruptcy court. What that means is they can now have a trial by jury of their peers, basically in the state of Delaware,’ McHugh said on “Morning in America.” “There are still more cases that are sitting in bankruptcy court, and this is the first wave of them. But now we’re officially seeing this process begin.”
Hertz has not agreed to do a sit-down interview with NewsNation but said in a statement it disagrees with the bankruptcy court’s rulings. McHugh said he expected the settlement to hit a billion dollars.
“In the last two years in bankruptcy, our hands were tied behind our back and our foot was stapled to the floor,” said attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy according to Yahoo! Finance. “Now the gloves come off.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.