SFist reports (based on a City Star report) that

… a woman who received more than 400 bedbug bites during her stay at San Francisco’s Ramada Plaza Hotel has received $71,000 to settle her claim against the downtown hotel. The out-of court settlement is the largest ever paid to victims in similar bedbug-attack cases.

That’s four hundred bites in 3 days.

And she claims that the bites eventually caused two ongoing skin conditions: dermatographic urticaria, and steroid acne, which DermNet NZ claims can be caused by taking steroids.Similar Posts:

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Several articles came out Wednesday about the spread of bed bugs in Nashville, Tennessee, both in hotels and in homes.

The Tennesseean reports that the Metro Health Department in Nashville investigates complaints about bed bugs in hotels, and keeps track of them:

The Metro Health Department has received 30 complaints of bedbugs at area hotels and motels in the first seven months of 2008, compared with 35 complaints in 2007.

That means the rate of bed bug complaints in Nashville hotels has gone up from an average of 2.9 a month in 2007 to 4.2 a month so far in 2008. That’s a significant increase.

But the increase does not concern the head of the Tennesee Hotel and Lodging Association:

Still, Walt Baker, chief executive officer of the Tennessee Hotel and Lodging Association, said visitors to Nashville can rest easy.

He noted there are 23,000 hotel rooms in Davidson County, 60 percent of which are occupied on any given night. So, he said, 30 complaints in 2008 is insignificant.

“Bedbugs are really a non-issue,” he said. “It’s not on our radar screen, it’s so small.”

If there were only 4.2 cases of bed bugs in Nashville hotels every month, some would argue that this is a small problem. (I’d still say it is worth taking seriously, especially given the increase from the previous year, and considering the havoc those bed bugs can wreak in the homes of paying customers who take them home.)

But we should assume that since a sizeable percentage of people do not react to bed bug bites and will have no idea they were bitten, that there are likely more bed bug encounters in Nashville hotels.

Add to this the fact that it probably does not occur to most people to call the local public health department when they encounter a pest in a hotel, and still others simply won’t bother. I’d assume that if you have 4.2 complaints per month, there are many more actual cases.

Now, I’m not much of a litigious sort. But if I encountered bed bugs in a Nashville hotel, Walt Baker’s dismissal of the bed bug problem as a “non-issue” would make me want to sue the pants off the hotel where I was bitten or where I picked up bed bugs and brought them home.

This dismissive attitude from the head of the lodging trade group in Tennessee definitely does not make me want to spend my tourist dollars in that town anytime soon.

News Channel 5 in Nashville tells viewers,

To check if a specific hotel has bedbugs, call the Metro Public Health Department at 615-340-5630.

And if you encounter bed bugs in a Nashville hotel or motel, why not call Metro Public Health at that same number, and report it?Similar Posts:

• Woman notifies hotel desk about bed bugs in room, is evicted from hotel
• “Bed bugs are back, and we’re not ready,” Sean Meagher tells Toronto
• Bed bugs on the rise in Detroit
• Ohio County, WV Health Dept. official: bed bugs “public health nuisance” and “psychological disaster”
• NYC Department of Education advertises for bed bug killer

Remember bed bugs at Fox News New York?

Now Jane Clark is suing the building management of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, where Fox and the Post are housed, as well as two building maintenance companies, over the bites she incurred, says CBS News.

The New York Observer reports that the lawyer for the plaintiff, a Mr. Schnurman, is blaming “Foreigners” for coming to hotels here and bringing bed bugs with them:

“My position is that it comes from foreigners,” Mr. Schnurman told The Observer. “Because it became so inexpensive for foreigners to travel here, I believe they brought it into our hotel system.”

I don’t think we’ve seen evidence that this is the way bed bugs got here. And there is plenty of evidence they were here before in lower numbers. Many factors are cited for their resurgence including overseas travel (which, as I am sure Mr. Schnurman has noticed, happens in both directions–and you can bet your patootie that people in other countries are claiming New Yorkers and Vancouverites and Cincinnatians are bringing bed bugs to their hotels too, as they surely are), and changes in pesticide use (including the move from monthly baseboard spraying towards targeted roach gels and treatment when needed. Pesticide resistance and chicken farms may also be relevant factors.

While there may have been some bed bugs in every country all these years (as in the US), they do seem to be spreading at a hasty pace worldwide. There isn’t some magical place where it all began, bed bug ground zero has not been identified, and appears to be a myth.

Anyway, I am not sure it’s at all relevant to the case where bed bugs came from, since the issue seems to be whether the building management and maintenance were responsible for the woman’s hardship and distress — which includes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (There don’t seem to be any hotel-billeted foreigners involved in this case, from what I can gather.)

Bed bugs moved with employees when their department moved to another part of the building, and the story is that Clark received bed bug bites on three separate occasions, raising the question of how many times she was actually bitten: three times, or during three periods?

I wondered also why the Observer felt it had to note that,

For the record, Ms. Clark had no history of mental illness prior to the bedbug attacks.

If she had, any distress she may have suffered could have been just as significant.

Interesting tidbit offered by the Observer: Alan Schnurman, assuming that’s the Mister in question,

. . . has handled “hundreds” of bedbug cases, most of which have been settled out of court.

You can read about some of them here.

New York vs. Bed Bugs has more links and additional prescient analysis.Similar Posts:

• More rumors of bed bugs at Fox News

More on the Nashua rooming-house mentioned in this story.

Richard Jebb of Nashua, New Hampshire, is suing his rooming-house, having had nine treatments in his room and still suffering from bed bugs, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

 On Tuesday, Jebb took his bug problem to Nashua District Court, suing his landlord, Mark Flint, and the owners of the building, 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC, for interrupting the “quiet enjoyment” of his property by not eradicating the problem in a timely fashion.

The company faces a $1,000 a day penalty for every day of the violation, about $240,000 if it is proven the company was in violation of the law in June.

Sixteen units inspected showed signs of bed bugs earlier this month.

The bugs only come out at night, he said, remarking that tenants in the building talk about seeing the bugs on their television screens late at night, something he said he recently experienced.

It’s not uncommon, especially in SROs, rooming houses, and other low-income housing, that tenants are afraid to (or don’t know how to) demand help with the problem.

Although many tenants in the building are suffering with the problem, Jebb said not all of them are willing to speak up about it.

Thank goodness Jebb was willing to go to bat:

It is partly for the “little guy” that Jebb said he decided to put his rent money in escrow and fight the issue in court.

“If that’s what it takes to get this building under control for all these people.”

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After traveling to 71 countries and staying in hundreds of hotels, NY1 journalist Valerie D’Elia encountered bed bugs in a hotel. Luckily, she did not appear to take them home with her.

Here she tells the story, and asks a few questions of attorney Steven De Castro (who’s been involved with bed bug lawsuits) and local entomologist/ Bedbugger hero Lou Sorkin. She talks about the signs and symptoms of bed bugs, but not really any suggestions about what to do to avoid taking them home.

If you recall, in September 2006, NY1 covered the city council hearing in New York (on bed bugs and the reselling of mattresses). They illustrated the opening with a nice, big photo of a dust mite. The segment below occurred within six months of that incident (I don’t know exactly when, but it was uploaded to YouTube in February). Suffice it to say, they’ve come a long way in those six months.

(I am not sure how we missed this when it aired, but it’s new to us, and maybe to you too!)

If the embedded video won’t work for you, click here.Similar Posts:

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Where can I read about bed bug lawsuits? Here are some cases discussed online. (Links which are internal to the blog have additional links to news reports and sometimes case information.)

General

Article about bed bug lawsuits in New York City (Sept. 2008)

New Furniture Purchase

Couple claims they were sold bed bug infested furniture by J. C. Penney in Cherry Hill, N.J. and wins $49,000 in jury trial.

Furniture Rental

Customer of Aaron Rents (they rented an infested living room suite) 2007

Summer Camp

Family sues YMCA Camp Storer claiming kid brought bed bugs home from camp 2008

College Students

This Fordham student sued the provider of third-party student housing in the New Yorker Hotel. (09/2007)

Hotel guests

Woman stays in a San Francisco Ramada and gets 400 bites in three days; settles out of court for $71K. October 2008

Winnipeg Howard Johnson’s motel sued by Toronto resident, Steven Lipson April 2008

Milford Plaza, NYC hotel guest sues hotel and hotel’s PCO for negligence, in progress, March 2008 (punitive damages dropped); Bedbugger and New York Law Journal

Ohio Hilton guest, 2007

Guest of Roger Smith Hotel, NYC, 2007

Siloam Springs (bed bugs in motel caused nightmares) 2007

NYC Opera Soprano at the Phoenix Hilton Suites 2006

Mandarin Oriental, London here and here and here. 2006

Barona Resort and Casino (Robert and Gloria Chisley suing for bed bug bites at resort; 2005, still pending as of 2008)

BURL MATHIAS and DESIREE MATHIAS, v. ACCOR ECONOMY LODGING, INC. and MOTEL 6 OPERATING L.P. (2003)

Tenants

Cleveland law student sues Reserve Square landlord after having bed bugs in two units (and gnats in a third) in one building (Nov. 2008).

Capricia Osirus of 23-25 Temple St. in Nashua, NH. (Aug. 2008)

Richard Jebb of 23-25 Temple St. in Nashua, NH. (Feb. 2008) Case lost, tenant counter-sued for back rent.

Presidential Towers in Chicago here and here and here. 2007

Maya Rudolph’s case: press is here. 2007

Six tenants vs. AIMCO 2007

Brooklyn tenant sues 2007

Peter H. Young (Ludlow Street, NYC)

See also:

Landlords talking about bed bugs and How to Avoid a Bed Bug Lawsuit (for lawyers)

Hotel lawyers talking about bed bugs here and here and here.

Your rights as a tenant and how to organize.

This won’t ever be comprehensive, but there are obvious gaps, so feel free to post comments below with additional links I might add.

Can you help me find a lawyer?

No, sorry. We are not a legal service, we’re not lawyers, and we haven’t sued.Similar Posts:

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A fourth person is suing Presidential Towers in Chicago: this time, on the grounds that Presidential Towers knew the neighbors had bugs, did not tell the tenant, who then got them.

This issue is relevant to all tenants with bed bugs. If landlords had to tell neighbors when one tenant had bed bugs, it might mean more people get treatment more quickly (which would be a good thing for landlords, in the end, because the problem could be treated before their entire buildings get infested). It would help tenants, because they could be warned (and as we know, some people don’t suffer from bites, and so may have no other warning.) In the end, it would lessen the spread of the bugs in a building and, by extension, in the larger community.

And though no one will want to admit their building has bed bugs, in the end, it might mean more people talk about this and the stigma is lessened. You can’t run or hide from bed bugs, so you might as well talk about them.

Previous Presidential Towers posts are here and here. And there are hundreds more on the internets.Similar Posts:

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A soprano from the New York City Opera is suing a hotel in Phoenix where she claims she suffered bed bug bites.

Trainer, who lives on the upper West Side, said she was staying at the Hilton Suites in Phoenix for a November performance when she woke up at 3:30 a.m. and found “a couple of bugs on my body.”

“I leaped out of bed and pulled back the sheet. They were everywhere! It was like a sci-fi movie,” she said.

Trainer said she immediately went to her laptop, typed “bedbugs” into Google, saw a picture of one and followed the advice to put a few in a Ziploc bag. The hotel manager offered to write off her room fee for that night, she said.

When the bites started to show, Trainer said she found she had 150 welts on her arms, legs and eyelids.

“She looks like a piece of wood that has been attacked by termites,” said her lawyer Kenneth Glassman.

Trainer is suing the Hilton hotel chain in Manhattan Supreme Court for $6 million.

She claimed the experience made sleep difficult and she looked terrible – but said she went on with her scheduled performances with the opera and Phoenix Symphony because otherwise, fellow singers on the program wouldn’t get paid.

Trainer might need laser treatments to help with scarring, her lawyer said.

A Hilton spokeswoman did not return a call for comment.

She got 150 welts in one night: that’s a serious infestation. Whenever I read these stories about hotel customers getting so many bites so quickly, I have to wonder if this is true, if other customers did not mention a problem before that. And if they did, why was the room offered?

A few points:

1/ This is not a cheap hotel.

2/ This is a person who probably does not need the publicity of a lawsuit. (Nor did SNL’s Maya Rudolph.)

3/ She is from NYC and encountered bed bugs in Phoenix. I highlight this because I am a bit tired of reading about people who don’t want to come to NYC because of the bed bugs. It can happen anywhere, and yes, those of us from NYC can be free of bed bugs here and meet them elsewhere. It is not a New York problem. San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Miami, Chicago, Phoenix and Lexington, KY have all been in the news lately as cities seeing a lot of bed bug activity. And hotels facing lawsuits have been anywhere from tourist destinations like Anaheim, California to sleepy places like Alton, Illinois.

4/ She is suing for $6 million based on one night of misery, and the bites, which of course lingered. But it really puts into perspective the misery suffered by so many of us at home, for much longer. Some of us have landlords who are culpable (for example, renting out apartments they know are infested, or withholding information about infested neighboring units.) I watch with interest to see how more lawsuits by renters might appear.

This comes hot on the heels of my posting Mike’s queries about avoiding bed bugs while traveling, and reducing the anxiety around them. I still think reinfestation is not likely to happen to any of us (sure, it’s a lot more likely than lightning striking once or twice, but not likely to keep hitting the same people nonetheless). That’s not to say I don’t worry when I travel. Once burned, and all that. I see the irony of the timing of this story right after my last post. And I realize that every day bed bugs multiply, making it more likely that we’ll get them, and perhaps even get them more than once.

Update: According to ABC news, she was actually in the hotel room for 6 days. (My mind was reeling at the thought of 150 bites in one night.) She was suffering from the effects before the 6th day, but did not know the cause of the itchy welts;  it was on the last day that she found “brutally conclusive proof” (bed bugs themselves, apparently). Similar Posts:

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According to the NY Sun, A Mexican family claims to have been attacked by bedbugs in the Anaheim Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. They filed a lawsuit, seeking damages.

The assistant general manager of the hotel, Karlyn Bretz, said the hotel hasn’t received a copy of the lawsuit. “We are definitely aware of the incident and the guest, and nothing is more important than our guests’ welfare,” Ms. Bretz said, noting that the hotel paid for medical treatment of the bites.

Ms. Juarez Bedoya’s lawyer, Alan Schnurman, called the hotel’s account “false” and claimed the hotel didn’t pay the medical bills.

Update (10/14):  here’s a news report which goes into more detail.  The woman and her two kids had over 1100 bites between them.Similar Posts:

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