Our customers continue to amaze me, and I always learn so much from them. One of them called me very late this past Saturday night after waking up from an 18-hour stint on a far-off assignment. He is a consultant and expert forensic witness for some of the largest fishing fleets operating in the Bering Sea, and one of his specialties is bed bug identification and remediation.

He shared some surprising news with me: class action litigation surrounding bed bug infestations in North America is exploding. He directed me to some online search results, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. There are now law firms that specialize exclusively in bed bug lawsuits for individuals bitten by these pests. This includes significant jury awards for tenants, as well as for those purchasing products infested with bed bugs. I encountered numerous examples of large financial awards granted by the courts to victims of untreated bed bug infestations.

In one of the more dramatic cases, a plaintiff claims that Wayfair, the online retailer, has been selling new mattresses infested with bed bugs since 2016. Yikes! One of the largest jury awards against an apartment owner was $1.6 million for the tenant.

Sensationalism is hard to avoid with such a topic, but the fact remains that bed bug infestations continue to rise both in North America and worldwide. The victims include those getting bitten by bed bugs and those who, by law, have the responsibility to prevent or remediate the problem once it has been identified.

The “Warrant of Habitability” is a legal definition used between landlords and tenants, indicating that the rented property is habitable and safe to live in. In 2019, the Colorado Legislature passed House Bill 19-1170 (the Residential Tenant Health & Safety Act), which is an example of the type of law that exists in many U.S. states today.

In all 50 states, tenants have the legal right to habitable living conditions, and it is the landlord’s responsibility to provide them. Living with bed bugs, their eggs, and nymphs is not considered a habitable situation, and it falls on the landlord to resolve the problem. Landlords who attempt to shift this responsibility onto their tenants are discovering the hard way that ignoring bed bugs can be financially and reputationally devastating. The financial repercussions for building owners often come in the form of jury verdicts (juries are of course mostly comprised of tenants, not landlords) and large settlements to class action attorneys who have learned how to extract maximum financial compensation from landlords, their attorneys, and insurance companies.

If you are a landlord, one of the best ways to protect yourself from these issues is to document that you are proactively addressing bed bug situations through inspections and remediation efforts. As I have stated in previous posts, it is much easier to eliminate bed bugs on the front-end, when infestations are small. A light to moderate infestation is mainly confined to bedrooms, where people sleep and where bed bugs locate their blood meal each night. Bed bugs do not wander aimlessly; they stay close to where they can feed.

If the problem is ignored and the bed bug population continues to grow, they will spread beyond the bedroom, making the issue more challenging and costly to remediate.

Many individuals and their children and pets are becoming allergic or sensitive to the toxic chemical pesticides repeatedly used to treat bed bugs ineffectively. The traditional pesticides used for these infestations can be argued in a courtroom to be a factor that makes a rental property uninhabitable. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a jury awarded a tenant compensation because a landlord attempted to treat bed bugs with pesticides, only to discover that one of the tenants had an allergic reaction or was hypersensitive to those chemicals, resulting in personal injury?

Electric bed bug heat treatment is an ideal solution for quickly eliminating bed bugs once a problem is identified. This method requires no pesticides and consistently kills bed bugs, their eggs, and nymphs at around 120° Fahrenheit, regardless of the strain of bed bug or where they might have come from.

Many of my public and subsidized housing customers are now constructing dedicated “hot box” treatment rooms to heat all new personal belongings and furniture before they are allowed into the building. PestPro Thermal industrial electric bed bug heaters are flexible for use in both hot boxes and the apartments themselves as needed. Our heaters have swiveling caster wheels that allow them to be moved long distances (from building to building down the sidewalk) or to navigate tight spaces in apartments, especially in cases where a tenant might be hoarding lots of personal belongings and other detritus.

In order to stay ahead of the risks associated with bed bug infestations, it makes sense to have insurance in the form of easy-to-use and safe heat equipment.  Acquiring an electric bed bug heater and a convection air mover fan enables you to treat up to 400 square feet to nip the infestation in the bud before it gets out of control No repeated pesticide applications will be required, apartments or rooms will never be out of service for more than 5-8 hours and you will avoid the high costs of putting your tenants or guests in hotel rooms or worse having to pay a jury award or settlement amount in court.

Enjoy this incredibly informative paper presented by the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel – an invitation-only organization of lawyers who focus their practice on the defense of civil claims and representation of insurers and corporations.

Download pdf FDCC Class Actions