Hertz files thousands of car theft complaints against customers every year. A judge ruled they have to make that data public.

A Delaware bankruptcy court judge has ruled that rental car company Hertz must make public the number of renters it accuses of stealing its cars. The ruling comes in the wake of a CBS News investigation of claims by customers who say they were falsely arrested.

As CBS News' consumer investigative correspondent Anna Warner reported Wednesday, one Colorado man alleges he was arrested after Hertz wrongly reported to police that he did not return a car in Georgia — a state he says he has never visited.

Hertz, which declared bankruptcy in 2020, had filed the data on theft reports under seal. CBS News' legal team filed a formal objection to the attempt to keep that and other statistics secret, leading to the court's decision Wednesday.