The Scariest Halloween Costume - Be a Bedbug!

Lawyers are a worried lot. Continually dealing with things that go wrong, they forget that most things run smoothly. My normal anxiety level increased recently as I traveled to Atlanta. My hotel was a historic, locally owned, small inn nestled in an out-of-the way quaint neighborhood. Most people checking in are excited to have found such a unique place. But as I opened the old fashioned door with my antique key, a nursery rhyme popped into my head. I could hear an old nanny crooning:

“Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t you let the bedbugs bite. And if they do, take a shoe and knock ‘em till they’re black and blue.”

The first night, when I should have been getting a good night’s sleep after a six hour drive from Chapel Hill, I lay awake for hours clutching my shoe just waiting to feel the first bite. You can’t imagine my relief when a careful inspection the next morning revealed nary a blemish. But guests in other hotels have not been so lucky.

Ms. Grogan and her daughter, Dana, checked into New York’s Milford Plaza one cold January night. At 4:00 a.m., Dana jumped out of her bed, threw back the covers and turned on the lights. On her bed, she and her mother saw 50-100 bugs, some crushed and some live. There were blood splats on the sheets and on Dana’s hand. More bugs were crawling up the wall. Horrified, the Grogan’s filed suit against the motel seeking both actual and punitive damages. The hotel countersued its pest control company and the race was on.

To be financially successful, the plaintiffs needed the Court to allow their punitive damages claim to be presented to the jury. They had no evidence of any permanent physical damages or of any significant economic damages caused by the bedbug attack. To support their punitive damages claim, they argued that prior to their stay in room #1540, the hotel knew that other rooms on the 15th floor had been infected by bedbugs. Although the defendants had treated those rooms, they had not taken steps to treat adjoining rooms. Plaintiffs’ bedbug expert testified that bedbugs crawl from room to room by way of TV cables. He said the defendants should have treated the entire 15th floor and the floors above and below it.

The Court ruled that the expert’s testimony certainly showed negligence on the part of the hotel and pest control company, but that it didn’t warrant an award of punitive damages. To support a punitive damage claim, plaintiffs must show that the defendants acted with reckless disregard for the safety of others or with intent to injure others. To illustrate the type of bedbug behavior that would justify a punitive damage award, the Court referred to a Chicago case, Mathias v. Accor Economy Lodging, Inc. In that case, the hotel rented out rooms, knowing the rooms were infested with bedbugs. It had decided that it was cheaper to gamble on whether a guest would complain than to pay a pest control company. Even in Mathias, the jury awarded only $5,000 in punitive damages to the plaintiffs.

North Carolina law caps punitive damage awards at $250,000 or three times the actual loss sustained by the plaintiff, whichever is larger. The cap does not protect drunk drivers who injure or kill others. Significantly, a plaintiff who loses a punitive damages case has to pay the attorney fees and court costs incurred by the defendant in fighting the punitive damages claim. These costs can exceed $100,000.00.

It is interesting to note that neither the Grogan nor the Mathias plaintiffs inadvertently took bedbugs home with them. Accordingly, they did not have the expense or additional aggravation of having to rid their houses of bedbugs. Had that happened, the defendants would have likely argued that the plaintiffs were to blame for failing to take steps that would have kept the bedbugs out of their homes.

North Carolina law bars a plaintiff who negligently contributes to his harm from recovering any damages. This is the doctrine of “contributory negligence.” Although most of the other states in the U.S. have abandoned the doctrine as being unfair, insurance company lobbyists have kept it alive and well in the Old North State.

So you can see why the threat of a bedbug attack would keep a lawyer up at night. It offers the threat of temporary itching, pain, and disfigurement along with the additional threat of an expensive and extremely inconvenient home eradication experience laden with toxic chemicals. And dealing with all of that is at the victim’s expense.

Experts warn us that bedbug infestation will soon spread throughout our country. A few weeks ago, Rosemont, Illinois, hosted the first annual North American Bedbug Summit. The Mayo Clinic now has a website addressing bedbugs.

It’s important to keep the bedbug issue in perspective. I have discovered that excessive worrying about bedbugs can result in imaginary bugs and bug bites. Although they aren’t real, they do itch and cause temporary welts. The condition is called “delusory parasitosis.” Experts at the University of Nebraska warn consumers that pesticides will not cure this condition and can cause skin irritation that will worsen the itching. Of course, this worries me even more. I can’t figure out who on earth would think to hire Orkin to get rid of imaginary bugs. Someone must have called the Orkin man for the problem, otherwise the Cornhuskers wouldn’t be warning us against it.

So, bottom line, if you want the most frightening Halloween costume of all, I recommend the bedbug get-up. However, I warn you that bedbug trick-or-treaters who come to my house will be getting a shot of my imaginary Orkin bug spray to run them off. No Chocolate For You!