Josh
Rolla,#2Consumer Suggestion
Sun, January 13, 2013
If somebody rents a car, they are the ones responsible for the insurance -- not the owner of the car. Therefore, your only recourse is to sue the thief or possibly the renter. I don't think Hertz has much of anything to do with this, unless you can prove that the car got stolen due to their negligence (which is unlikely). After all, it would be quite ridiculous if your car got stolen and you had to pay for the property damage the thief caused.
Big companies (and government agencies) are almost all self-insured for things like property damage. The purpose of insurance is to reduce the risk of a large loss by spreading those losses among a large group (large enough that the total losses are reasonably constant from year to year). A large company that owns thousands of vehicles will also have reasonably constant losses from one year to the next, so there is no point in purchasing insurance -- the risk is already spread out. This doesn't mean they aren't liable, you are just dealing directly with them rather than another company.