Hertz agrees to pay $168 million to settle allegations its customers were being falsely accused of stealing rental cars — and even sometimes arrested

• The company has reached settlements with hundreds of customers.

• The company was accused of causing false reports of stolen cars.

• Almost all of the claims against it will be resolved in the settlement.

The company has agreed to pay $168 million to customers who say they were wrongly reported for stealing rental cars.

The company said it will pay the money by the end of the year.

The settlement won't have a material impact on the company's capital allocation plans for the next two years. Some of the settlement amount is expected to be covered by its insurance carriers.

"As I have said before, my intention is to lead a company that puts the customer first, and that's what I'm going to do athertz," he said. We are trying to resolve these claims in a way that is satisfactory to us.

According to the lawsuit, one of the customers who joined the class action lawsuit was arrested four times.

Insider previously reported that in October of last year, a gold club member was arrested after she used her membership to book and check out a rental car at the Atlanta airport.

She spent nine days in jail each time she was arrested because she failed to show up for court because she didn't know the court dates.

She was hospitalized for three days after she had a baby.

According to the lawsuit, Hertz knows that its tracking and inventory control is broken, but still reports the cars as stolen.

Francis Alexander Malofiy, a lawyer working on the class action lawsuit, told Insider that the company didn't back down from its false theft claims because it wanted to protect its relationship with law enforcement.

A man who rented a car through the company was surrounded by police 30 minutes later because the company had reported the car as stolen.

The then-13-year-old daughter of Nicholas Wright, who was with him during the incident with police, is currently in therapy.

"That is going to be a long-term thing that she's probably going to struggle with for the rest of her life," Wright told Insider. Hersh needs to be held accountable.

The company implemented policies to stop the false arrests after acknowledging its role in the incident on CNBC.

The Wall Street Journal reported that most of the legal claims surrounding false arrests went into the company's bankruptcy proceedings. False arrests continued after the company emerged from Chapter 11.

Business Insider has an article on it.