Edward Reed and Juanise Rayford are among eleven residents who are suing the Midland Motor Inn, a motel on Staten Island, because of bed bugs.  Staten Island Live reports that

The couple are among 11 motel residents who have recently sued the building owner, 630 Midmot Corp., in state Supreme Court, St. George.

The plaintiffs, who seek unspecified monetary damages, contend they have been “severely” bitten and sickened by “unabated” bedbug infestation.

Several of them have been diagnosed with scabies, a contagious skin infection, said their lawyer, Alan D. Levine of Queens.

“It’s made it impossible for them to sleep,” said Levine. “Many of them have had multiple visits to doctors or hospitals.”

It is important to note that bed bugs do not cause scabies, which is an unrelated  skin disease caused by the scabies mite which burrows under skin.

However, the article also details allegations of bed bug bites and the presence of bed bugs (with photos of samples).  New York’s Housing and Preservation Department inspectors cited bed bug violations in one room in May and June.

Some residents placed by Project Hospitality are being relocated to city shelters.

See:  Suit says bedbugs infest motel on Staten Island – SILive.com.

Update (9/4/2009):

The Midland Motor Inn still has bed bugs, according to a story Friday in the Staten Island Advance. Councilman James Oddo has vowed to continue exerting pressure on the motel owner to solve the problem, the SI Advance reports:

“I pledge to you that on behalf of the beleaguered Midland Beach community, who have endured a diminished quality of life because of your lack of concern, my office will remain vigilant in working with the city agencies to do all we can to inspect, enforce and compel your compliance with all rules and regulations,” Oddo said in a letter to Patel.

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A family is suing a hotel near Chicago’s O’Hare airport after allegedly encountering bed bugs in the hotel, suffering from bed bug bites, and bringing bed bugs  home with them. CBS 2 reports,

The suit, which names First Hospitality Group, Inc., Holiday Inn Select-Chicago O’Hare and Rosemont RREF, LLC as defendants, claims the Holiday Inn failed to exterminate the infestation, and knowingly rented the room anyway.

It also claims the family ended up taking the bugs home with them, leading to an infestation of their own.

The incident caused physical and psychological injuries, medical expenses, pain and suffering and loss of wages, the suit alleges. It also caused the family to spend “unnecessary time and expenses” in attempts to get rid of the bugs in their home.

The suit asks for more than $50,000 in damages.

via Family Sues Holiday Inn Over Bed Bug Infestation – cbs2chicago.com.Similar Posts:

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• Christian Hardigree on bed bug legal issues
• Fox Chicago engages with the tenants vs. landlords bed bug blame game

Last summer’s PCT Bed Bug Seminars featured Christian Hardigree, a University of Nevada – Las Vegas law professor who is an expert on beg bug legal issues.  Brad Harbison interviewed her for PCT Online, and I highly recommend you give it a listen (click the play button below).

Hardigree discusses some of the grounds on which people have sued over bed bugs:

• overexposure to pesticides (when a property was being treated by two entities at once, for example)
• rentals of a home or hotel room when the owner or property manager knew of an infestation and did not try to protect the customer
• landlords have sued tenants who stopped paying rent due to bed bugs (and tenants have been awarded a partial credit based on the “uninhabitable portion” of the home)

The legal theories under which people could be held liable include:

• severe emotional distress
• battery
• gross negligence
• warranty (which can be created, Hardigree says, when employees make claims such as “this is a bed bug-free property”)

Hardigree makes recommendations that business owners:

• know the law relating to bed bugs
• have an action plan (she describes how hotels should know what to do when a guest complains of bed bug bites)
• train employees to detect bed bugs (and reward them for doing so; some hotels give cash payments for room attendants who report evidence of bed bugs)
• know how bed bugs work (for example, bite marks may appear after hotel guests return home; hotels need to know this can be legitimate)

Hardigree says most people sue because their complaints are not taken seriously, because “nobody validated their concerns or their fears.”  This comes up often if you read accounts of people who sued over bed bugs (see these articles for examples). It is an intuitive point, but I suspect many business owners and managers miss it completely.

It’s a brief interview, and there are some things missing which seem important to me.  First, while Hardigree describes steps hotel owners should take (as part of their action plan) to contain an infestation once reported, she does not go into the issue of people who don’t just get bitten by bed bugs in a hotel, but take them home.  This does not happen every time, but it happens a lot.

Moreover, Hardigree does not discuss the fact that many people simply do not react to bed bug bites.  Jerome Goddard has said the percentage who do not react to bed bug bites may be as high as 70%.  This is an important fact for business owners to recognize, since they may have complaints from people who do not ever show bite reactions, but who may nevertheless bring bed bugs home.

One thing I was concerned about:  Hardigree rightly notes that hotel managers need to be aware that guests may call to complain about bed bugs “three to four days” after returning home.  (Actually, some of the literature claims bed bug bites can appear as much as nine days later.)  And yet later, she says that when hotel managers have a bed bug complaint, one of the things they should do is photograph the guests’ bed bug bite marks.  Not just to see which areas of the body have bite marks, but also to see where they do not have bites, because later the guest may claim to have had bed bug bites from head to toe.

There’s an inconsistency there.  Bed bug bites can appear later, if they appear at all.  If someone is bitten in a hotel room it is quite possible for them to show some evidence of bites sustained during the visit, and to have additional bites appear later, because of the possibility of delayed reactions Hardigree describes.  So photographic proof of the bites which are present when the complaint is made does not constitute proof of the extent of the reaction the person may suffer from the bites.

All in all, the nine and a half minute interview is very interesting listening, for consumers and business owners alike.  I recommend you take the time to listen in full (click here).

You can read accounts of bed bug lawsuits (completed or in progress) here.

Thanks to Renee for the tip!Similar Posts:

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• A tale of two bed bug-troubled cities: Cincinnati, Columbus

James F. McCarty of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Monday that

A law student has sued one of downtown Cleveland’s chicer high-rises, contending that bedbugs drove him from two apartments — and flying gnats from a third.

In his lawsuit, Joshua Bobrowsky said the blood-sucking vermin in three Reserve Square apartments left him with painful welts and months of psychological and emotional distress. He seeks $142,000 in damages.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Bobrowsky, 26, of Pittsburgh, said in an interview Tuesday. “It was just a very horrible experience. Life isn’t enjoyable anymore when you think that everything you own is infested with parasites.”

A few questions:

1.  It is very easy to move bed bugs from one unit to another.  Could this account for Bobrowsky’s second apartment in the building having bed bugs?

2.  The “chicest” high rises in Cleveland charge $1650 for a 3-bedroom?  

(I just heard a rush of Manhattanites and their offspring running through the tunnel to New Jersey– they’re on their way, Cleveland!)

3.  Flying gnats?  Aren’t they a lot easier to get rid of than bed bugs?

Thanks to the Bedbugger who tipped me off to this one! Similar Posts:

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Richard Jebb, the first tenant of this building to sue the landlords, lost his case.

A second person, a former tenant, is suing the landlord of the rooming house at 23-25 Temple St. in Nashua, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Capricia Osirus, a former tenant of 23-25 Temple St., filed a summons in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Nashua last month alleging that the owners of 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC failed to correct a bedbug infestation in her unit for more than six months in 2007 and 2008.

She’s claiming she suffered “serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries” (presumably the bed bug bites) and that she will continue to be caused pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life in the future.

Osirus, “sustained serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries,” as a result of negligent handling of the bedbug infestation at the building, Sheppard wrote, adding that Osirus had been “caused and will be caused in the future to endure pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.”

Your thoughts?
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Diep Huynh and Oanh Nguyen, a Pennsauken, NJ couple who claim they got bed bugs from a new bedroom furniture set, won $49,000 in a jury trial.

Today a jury awarded the Pennsauken, N.J. couple $49,000 finding that the bedroom furniture they purchased at J.C. Penney in Cherry Hill was infested with bed bugs. “For months, they didn’t know what was causing all their problems and the itching. When they found out that it was the bed bugs, it’s kind of like, it freaks you out a little bit,” said Kevin Siegel, an attorney for the family.

The family bought the furniture back in May of 2006. It was delivered 3 months later in June. It included a chest, dresser and bed-frame with a headboard, costing about $1600.

The family says they were given no choice but to sue after the company agreed to pay to remove the furniture, and to exterminate their room.

But that apparently never happened.

Their lawyer was Kevin Siegel.

You can read the full article or watch the video of Jessica Borg’s news report from WPVI Philadelphia here.Similar Posts:

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This bed bug case has been pending for three years. And for a few reasons, it’s an interesting one.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Gloria and Robert Chisley claim they were bitten by bed bugs in the Barona Resort and Casino, in Lakeside, California (August 2005).

The case is interesting, first of all, because it concerns alleged events in a tribal resort/casino and so is being tried under the Barona tribe’s judicial system.

It’s also interesting because the resort and casino is claiming that the plaintiff had scabies, not bed bugs:

The tribe disputes Gloria Chisley’s contention that she was attacked by bedbugs at its hotel, suggesting instead that her marks were the result of scabies, a condition that would have taken weeks to develop before Chisley showed the marks to hotel employees.

Doctors who have examined Chisley are split on the cause of her marks — one saying bedbugs and two scabies.

Since many of us (especially a few years back, before bed bugs were as well known) were wrongly told by our doctors that we had scabies, I found this interesting.

I gather this is a less frequent occurrence today, as doctors are becoming more aware of the problem of bed bugs.

Incidentally, scabies can be tested for with skin scrapings. Apparently biopsies can also be done, in many cases, to verify a “bite” is from an insect. Neither test, from what I gather, is foolproof.

Scabies, untreated, will not go away. Bed bug bites, in the absence of bed bugs, will.

If the plaintiff was convinced by any of these doctors to undergo treatment for scabies, and at the same time, the couple were removed from the presence of bed bugs, when the condition cleared, it might be very hard to prove whether the scabies mite or bed bugs were the culprits.

And it isn’t clear from this LA Times article whether the couple saw bed bugs, or obtained bed bug samples.

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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

Daniel Wise of the New York Law Journal reports that

In a ruling of first impression, a Manhattan judge has scratched a request for punitive damages in a bedbug case.

But the judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische, let go forward the negligence claims of two Maryland tourists for bites they sustained during a two-night stay at the theater district’s Milford Plaza.

The tourists, Debra Grogan and her adult daughter, Dana, are seeking $2 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified amount of punitive damages.

In rejecting their request for punitive damages, Justice Gische referred to a New York City Department of Health pamphlet in ruling that the two women had failed “to raise a triable issue of fact whether bedbugs are anything more than a nuisance.”

It’s important to understand that the plantiffs are still able to proceed with their claims for $2 million in compensatory damages for negligence. Only the request for punitive damages has been rejected.

What is interesting here is that in making this decision, the judge apparently cited the NYCDOMHH Bed Bug Fact Sheet, which asks and answers questions about bed bugs, and says:

ARE BED BUGS DANGEROUS?

Although bed bugs are a nuisance, they are not known to spread disease.

The plaintiff is suing the Milford Plaza and the Pest Control Operator with whom the Milford had a contract (PAC Extermination Services). The Grogans stayed in a room infested with bed bugs that was near two rooms treated for bed bugs less than a month earlier, but which was itself not treated:

Evidence in the case showed that three weeks before the Grogans’ stay, the hotel had asked PAC to exterminate bedbugs in two rooms near the room reserved by the Grogans. Work orders had been issued for rooms 1511 and 1512 on Dec. 22, 2002. The Grogans stayed in room 1540 from Jan. 17 to Jan. 19, 2003.

The Grogans’ argument is backed up by an entomologist’s testimony that bed bugs travel from room to room:

In support of their claims, the Grogans presented the affidavit of an expert in insects who teaches epidemiology and other courses at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

(It’s worth noting that although bed bugs are not currently known to spread disease, they are still the subject of study by an entomologist who teaches epidemiology in a medical school.)

The entomologist, Robert J. Novak, reported that bedbugs can “easily” migrate from one room to another and that “proper eradication techniques” require inspection of “adjacent or contiguous rooms, or even rooms on several floors above and below” the floor where the pests had been spotted.

With the defendants having offered no affidavit to counter Dr. Novak’s assertions, Gische wrote, the Grogans had presented enough evidence that the hotel had “constructive notice” of the need to fumigate room 1540 to deny the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The case must go to trial, Gische ruled, because Novak’s affidavit “set forth genuine issues of fact about the life span of bedbugs, how they migrate and whether these factors should have been (or were) taken into consideration by the defendants in how rooms were treated following bedbug complaints by other guests.”

Even more interesting, this case may have ramifications for the ways PCOs treat for bed bugs.

PAC Extermination Services had argued that it should be released from the case because its obligations were limited to completing work in specifics rooms the hotel had asked to be fumigate.

But Gische said a jury must decide whether the exterminator’s duties were so “comprehensive and exclusive” that it had assumed a duty to keep rooms, other than those for which it received work orders, in “a reasonably safe condition.”

We often hear from PCOs who treat buildings that landlords will ask them to treat just the infested room or rooms, and will often refuse to have other adjacent units on the same or other floors inspected. I can only assume that many hotel managers will make the same request.

In such a case, it’s my understanding that PCOs have two choices: refuse the job (knowing some other PCO will be happy to do as the landlord asks), or do the job, knowing it is likely not enough. This is not an easy choice to make, by any means.

Depending on the court’s findings in this case, we may see a change in this. It may mean more PCOs refuse to treat under such circumstances, insisting instead that adjacent and nearby units are inspected and/or treated.

It could also have ramifications for the price of treatment, since it will doubtless lead to more litigation along the same lines.Similar Posts:

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If we had a 24-hour bedbug channel, Mathias v. Accor Economy Lodging, Inc. would be our favorite movie of the week, with endlessly looping re-runs on weekends and major holidays.

It’s a juicy, outrageous story complete with scenes of the plaintiff’s lawyer passing a jar of bedbugs to the jurors and damning testimony by a former employee of the defendant.

In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a more righteous bedbug lawsuit.

The events in question happened in 2000, well before Bedbugger and, I hope, well before most of us had bedbugs — but we’ll come back to that.

Burl and Desiree Mathias spent two nights at a Motel 6 in Chicago in November 2000. The welts appeared after the first night. On the second night, Burl Mathias found two bugs, but did not know what they were so “he killed them with a tissue and went to sleep.”

Awaking after 1 a.m., Burl allegedly lifted his sheets and saw numerous bugs scurrying from his body to the sheets and bed.  “Horrified, [he] sprang up and discovered the blood-engorged insects crawling about the inside of the bed where he previously lay,” Stamatis [Peter Stamatis, the Mathiases' attorney] stated. Once the lights were on, the siblings reported seeing bugs on the beds, furniture and walls. They asked to be transferred to another hotel, says their attorney, but were instead moved to a different room on the same floor.

The Mathiases sued and the jury awarded $5,000 in compensatory damages and $186,000 in punitive damages, a total of $191,000 to each sibling.

Accor Economy Lodging and Motel 6 Operating appealed, of course. And we may well be grateful, for now we can enjoy the rest of the story in the brilliant appellate judge’s eminently readable affirming decision:

In 1998, EcoLab, the extermination service that the motel used, discovered bedbugs in several rooms in the motel and recommended that it be hired to spray every room, for which it would charge the motel only $ 500; the motel refused. The next year, bedbugs were again discovered in a room but EcoLab was asked to spray just that room. The motel tried to negotiate “a building sweep [by EcoLab] free of charge,” but, not surprisingly, the negotiation failed. By the spring of 2000, the motel’s manager “started noticing that there were refunds being given by my desk clerks and reports coming back from the guests that there were ticks in the rooms and bugs in the rooms that were biting.” She looked in some of the rooms and discovered bedbugs.

Further incidents of guests being bitten by insects and demanding and receiving refunds led the manager to recommend to her superior in the company that the motel be closed while every room was sprayed, but this was refused.

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how many bedbugs were in this motel, untreated, uncontrolled, dispersing from room to room for two whole years? How fast does something like this happen? We have a hint, albeit in a different context, from UK entomologist Clive Boase (link is PDF) when he tells us that “[i]n one housing block, infestations spread from room to adjoining room at a rate of about one room per seven weeks, with dispersion taking place primarily along plumbing runs.”

What about the $500 quote to treat the entire hotel? Or what those motel-PCO negotiations must have been like? But wait, almost improbably, there’s more:

The infestation continued and began to reach farcical proportions, as when a guest, after complaining of having been bitten repeatedly by insects while asleep in his room in the hotel was moved to another room only to discover insects there; and within 18 minutes of being moved to a third room he discovered insects in that room as well and had to be moved still again. (Odd that at that point he didn’t flee the motel.) By July, the motel’s management was acknowledging to EcoLab that there was a “major problem with bed bugs” and that all that was being done about it was “chasing them from room to room.” Desk clerks were instructed to call the “bedbugs” “ticks,” apparently on the theory that customers would be less alarmed, though in fact ticks are more dangerous than bedbugs because they spread Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Rooms that the motel had placed on “Do not rent, bugs in room” status nevertheless were rented.

It was in November that the plaintiffs checked into the motel. They were given Room 504, even though the motel had classified the room as “DO NOT RENT UNTIL TREATED,” and it had not been treated. Indeed, that night 190 of the hotel ’s 191 rooms were occupied, even though a number of them had been placed on the same don’t-rent status as Room 504.

191 rooms, hence the 191K award to each sibling, and what are the odds that poor guy just gave up with the fourth room.

Dark thought? Did hotels take notes on this one and merely do away with their “Do not rent, bugs in room” status codes?

Even darker thought? One of us has bedbugs descended from Room 504. Perhaps a lot of us. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination nor a biblical list of who begat whom to consider how so many bedbugs in so many rooms could leave to so many destinations with their new possibly puzzled, possibly oblivious, plenty of them non-itchy, hosts. How many of us even knew what bedbugs were in 1998-2000?  (The proximity of this timeline to the beginning of the resurgence is provocative; perhaps someone with an armchair interest in epidemiological analysis will care to weigh in.)

I really should resist but can’t help noting that Motel 6 is known for its “we’ll leave the light on for you” tag line.

I will further note that the Motel 6 in Chicago where all of this happened is now a shiny Red Roof Inn, same corporate parent, with nary a bedbug complaint on tripadvisor… well, only one mildly suggestive one, anyway.

This Chicago Tribune article discusses the significance of Judge Richard Posner’s decision in the debate over punitive damages. For another appreciation of Judge Posner and this decision, see this Harvard Law Review article (PDF), although it does muse unconvincingly at the end about how businesses like Motel 6 which depend on customers have built-in incentives to protect their reputations and need not be deterred from wrongdoing with the specter of large punitive damages. Judge Posner would probably disagree and indeed noted that “the defendant is investing in developing a reputation intended to deter plaintiffs. It is difficult otherwise to explain the great stubborness with which it has defended this case, making a host of frivolous evidentiary arguments despite the very modest stakes even when the punitive damages awarded by the jury are included.”

By the way, in his decision, Judge Posner said that Motel 6’s “failure either to warn guests or to take effective measures to eliminate the bedbugs amounted to fraud and probably to battery as well.” Bedbug battery. Righteous.Similar Posts:

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