Rental car company Hertz has agreed to pay almost $170 million in settlements over claims of false robbery with its customers. 

The company said in a press release that it had settled 364 claims, which resolves over 95% of all of the claims. It will pay around $168 million by the end of the year and said it “expects to recover a meaningful portion of the settlement amount from its insurance carriers.”

Customers of the car company have argued that they were pulled over, arrested, and put in jail and prosecuted for stealing vehicles. In reality, they claimed, Hertz just couldn’t find the cars after they were turned back in. Some customers have taken issue with other frustrations with their rentals.

One of the lawsuits involved 47 customers and claimed the company didn’t keep track of rental extensions and incorrectly said customers hadn’t issued payments. The suit also said that Hertz didn’t keep track of its cars and also didn’t rectify false reports that had been made to law enforcement. 

TIRED OF THE LEGACY MEDIA’S BIAS CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE AND OBSCURING THE TRUTH? JOIN US AND SAVE 30%.

Some of the people who have sued Hertz said police held them at gunpoint over the mixups. 

“We are reviewing and considering each claim brought against Hertz on its individual merits,” Hertz spokesman Jonathan Stern said at the time. “We have begun extending settlement offers to dozens of claimants and will continue to do so on a case by case basis.”

Hertz CEO Steven Scherr arrived at the company in February and promised to fix the problem. 

“As I have said since joining Hertz earlier this year, my intention is to lead a company that puts the customer first. In resolving these claims, we are holding ourselves to that objective,” Scherr said.

“While we will not always be perfect, the professionals at Hertz will continue to work every day to provide best-in-class service to the tens of millions of people we serve each year. Moving forward, it is our intention to reshape the future of our company through electrification, shared mobility and a great digital-first customer experience,” he added. 

In June, Hertz distributed its initial grouping of settlement offers. Prior to the settlements, the lawyers for the plaintiffs guessed that the total amount of money in damages would be over $960 million, but Hertz acknowledged that the company felt as if that figure was exaggerated. 

Hertz also said that the settlement money will probably not have a “material impact on its capital allocation plans for the balance of 2022 and 2023.”

Los Angeles has officially banned new oil wells in the city, further increasing the city’s reliance on foreign sources of oil.

On Friday, the Los Angeles City Council held a vote and all were in favor of getting rid of oil drilling in Los Angeles. They greenlit a measure to prohibit the extraction process of new oil and gas. The vote for the measure passed with no one voting against it — 12 to 0. 

The city will get rid of operations that already are running “after a 20-year amortization period,” according to a fact sheet. 

“This may be the most important step towards environmental justice that this council has taken in recent memory,” Council President Paul Krekorian said.

TIRED OF THE LEGACY MEDIA’S BIAS CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE AND OBSCURING THE TRUTH? JOIN US AND SAVE 30%.

In October, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors also supported a similar measure. In January, the entire City Council voted in favor of creating a resolution after the county voted to get rid of oil and gas drilling last year.

While some have pushed Los Angeles to end oil drilling, there is also worry about the possible loss of employment opportunities and spike in gasoline prices.

“What happens very often is the profiteers of the oil and gas companies will use their mistreated workforce as a way to try to push back on policymakers,” Krekorian claimed at a briefing. ”They will try to use a fake, false untruthful argument about impacts on gasoline prices.” He also said that the time of oil and gas production is stopping either way. 

Warren Resources is one of the companies that has oil wells in the region and was against the measure. 

In a statement, president James A. Watt, said the company plans to ”use all available legal resources to protect our major investment from this unlawful taking” and said that pollution resulting from its work was “on par with that of a fast-food restaurant.”

“Warren has demonstrated to the City Council and all other regulatory authorities that we are not an environmentally significant pollution source for the community,” Watt said.

The decision also has international implications. 

Hector Barajas, a spokesman for the California Independent Petroleum Association, said the new measure makes it so that the 2.5 million oil barrels made by the city last year would need to now come from international imports, like those from Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. 

“Our in-state oil is the only California climate-compliant oil in the world, given that oil producers must adhere to the state’s greenhouse gas reduction program and account for all emissions,” Barajas pointed out. “Foreign oil imports are totally exempt from those requirements.”

The latest development goes in line with Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom’s efforts from earlier this year. California legislators passed legislation making it so that new oil and gas wells have to be established at least 3,200 feet away from community areas and homes.