On Dec. 22, 2005, John Fuller was arrested an Enterprise Rent-A-Car location in Spartanburg, S.C. and on charges of grand larceny of a rental car owned by the local Thrifty Car Rental, the Herald Journal reports.

Hours later, Fuller was found to have been charged with the wrong crime, a month later the failure to return a rental car charge was thrown out, and just recently a jury awarded the 43-year-old youth minister $400,000 in damages, to be paid by GSP Transportation Inc., the owner of the Spartanburg Thrifty franchise, for damages caused by the arrest and imprisonment.

Records of Fuller's dealings with Thrifty show that, starting with a payment on Nov. 29, he paid $890.95 to rent a 2005 Toyota Sienna van at a rate of $296.95 per week. Those payments secured the car through Dec. 20, but an employee erroneously typed in Dec. 19 as the final date of his contract. Since the wrong date was put in the system, the arrest warrant was executed 24 hours too early.

Fuller’s judgement also included $275,000 in punitive damages.

Jeffrey Schoepfel, the president of GSP Transportation, said he did not have enough details about the case to give his opinion.

According to the Herald Journal, Fuller was at Enterprise, trying to rent another car, when the Thrifty employee arrived with two police officers.

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