Hertz Corp. has offered to settle about three dozen cases filed by renters that say they were wrongly arrested for auto theft, the company said, Bloomberg News reported. The settlement push comes after Colleen Batcheler took over as general counsel for the rental company. During her first month on the job, Batcheler made it her top priority to end suits from more than 230 customers accusing Hertz of improperly calling in police on its renters, mostly while haggling about overdue rentals. “We’ve tried to take a step back and say ‘How can we make progress in a way that is fair to our customers and is based on individual facts and circumstances,’” Batcheler said in an interview. Hertz lost a key court battle earlier this month when a federal judge allowed more than 70 customers to sue for false arrests. Until then, Hertz had successfully forced nearly all of the lawsuits to remain under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Delaware. Batcheler declined to say how much money the company was offering to the alleged victims and their families.
