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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

There is no claim that a CEO or board member made any false statements to police in this story. Furthermore, no matter who at Hertz called it in, the crime of "making false statements" generally requires that the statements be knowingly and willfully wrong.

If Hertz reports a car stolen because front desk staff made a mistake, that's simply not criminal. This also applies to you as an individual too. If you report your car stolen when you forgot where you parked it, that is also not criminal. Hertz is being treated the same as you would be.

I don't see anything in this story that describes a crime. (except for the people who may have actually stolen cars) These are descriptions of civil wrongdoings.

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You're completely ignoring the point of the comment that you're responding to. Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening.

I don't understand what you think I am ignoring.

> Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening.

Of course, this is what the 191 lawsuits are about. They are to determine Hertz's culpability in -- with what the article describes -- are the civil wrongdoings I mentioned in my above comment.

> Someone at Hertz is culpable for not taking steps to prevent this from happening.

It's far from clear that anybody at Hertz is criminally culpable, which is what was suggested upthread, with talk of people making false statements being arrested.

Which is indisputably a problem with our society.

I think, that to suggest that people should be held criminally responsible for the mistakes of others (assuming that these are mistakes), is a pretty extreme position. Over-criminalization of everything a much more problematic situation that had led to larger problems with mass incarceration that underlies many of the most significant problems that the US has.

The solution to everything isn't "lock 'em up and throw away the key". We have functional civil courts, and they are more than capable of remediating wrongs.

No. They should be held responsible for their own mistakes. I'm not sure who else but the CEO and board you think have the ability and responsibility to make sure their company is acting appropriately.

> We have functional civil courts, and they are more than capable of remediating wrongs

That's actually a good one. Thanks for the laugh.

Organizations are good at diffusing responsibility. Even when crime is egregious, like the pfas leak, and would be enough to sentence everyone in the organization to life in prison, justice can't find anyone who is directly liable, so nobody is punished.

Some say this diffusion of responsibility is the point of modern corporate structure.

Perhaps for the first, or second, or tenth instance - but surely at some point, if certain senior people at Hertz know, or ought to know, that their system has a track record of making incorrect accusations, and they continue to use it anyway, it must rise to at least a standard of wilful indifference to whether or not the statements are correct.

According to the statement by Hertz in the article, it seems that they believe the majority of the statements are correct.

If there’s some memo floating around that says otherwise, then maybe it’s a crime.

Is an honest belief that there's a bare 51% probability that my statement is correct really good enough?

It doesn't work like that. It's not graded on a percentage scale, it's pass/fail.

"Knowingly" and "willfully" have legally significant meanings with their own standards of the mental state that qualifies. It is then up to the court to determine whether or not your actions have met those conditions.

I ask because "believe a majority of the statements are correct" can mean as little as "more likely to be correct that not" - it's pretty weak tea.

Why isn't not returning the rental car also a civil wrongdoing? You violated the rental contract, let Hertz process that as a civil case?

I'm not 100% sure, but believe this is the case in many states.

As to why some states criminalize it... I don't know, too many years of voting for tough-on-crime politicians?

I'd love to see which states consider it civil-only.

In every one I've heard of, it can (and eventually will, for varying values of 'eventually') get you arrested for grand theft auto.

I don't disagree. Let me slightly backtrack on my previous statement: I think some states explicitly spell out penalties for failure to return a rental car, while in others, it may be up to the specific circumstances to determine whether a crime has taken place or whether it is a civil disagreement or misunderstanding on terms, etc.

I remember a recent rental car contract of mine that pointed out these specific state laws. e.g.: https://law.justia.com/codes/nevada/2010/title15/chapter205/...

I think you are correct on this, this is indeed a civil matter, it's called voluntary parting, in other cases that made it to this site where people have tried to report to the police that the camera they rented out or something was never returned were told it's not theft. I think what happens is that they report the vehicles to the police as stolen, as they would if they found a car missing from the lot, instead of telling them someone did not return it.

This varies. Some state laws specifically criminalize the failure to return rental cars in plain language. For example: https://law.justia.com/codes/nevada/2010/title15/chapter205/...

Because then people without sufficient assets to go after would basically be unable to rent a car.

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