Bed bug verdict means apartment owner must pay $1.6 million

A jury has awarded a California family $1.6 million in one of the largest single bed bug case awards ever reported, according to a release.

Liliana Martinez told NBC in Los Angles her family suffered for months with bed bugs at the Kahala Islander Apartments in Inglewood, California in 2010. She said her child, a baby at the time, was covered in bites.

“Just seeing how he would scratch all the time and nothing would heal because it would start bleeding again. It was very emotional, very stressful,” she told the television station.

The family says they complained to apartment management and were told to throw out all of their furniture and sleep on the floor. But it took months to eradicate the bugs. The lawyer who represents the apartment building declined to comment on the case.

The defendant in the case, Amusement Six Apartments LLC owns an apartment complex in Inglewood and simply didn’t respond appropriately to the Plaintiffs complaints about bed bugs, according to Yahoo news.

Apartment company slow to respond to bed bug issue

According to the suit, it took management 9 days to initially schedule bed bug treatment, and when they did, the pest control operator left handfuls of chemical all over their belongings and carpet. When the plaintiffs complained about the chemical, the management told them there was nothing they could do, and they should vacuum a square area in their living room to sleep on with their 2 young children. Although they then agreed to change the carpet, it took them 3 months to do so, and all the while, the bed bugs were feeding and breeding in the carpet until it was changed. The family continued to receive bed bug bites the entire time.

Brian Virag, attorney from the law firm of mybedbuglawyer.com, obtained the $1.6 million verdict for the family and said in a release it was the largest verdict for a single family for bedbugs in the U.S. He represented the family of four including a 3-year old boy and a 3-month old baby girl who were all bitten by bed bugs. His clients were all exposed to bed bugs between July and October of 2012.

The case was Liliana Martinez Et. Al. v. Amusement Six Apartments LLC.

The young boy, Jorge Maravilla Jr., who was 3 years old at the time of the bed bug exposure was covered in bedbug bites. He has significant residual scarring to the day. The jury awarded Jorge Jr. $880,000.

Fifth bed bug verdict

This is the fifth landmark verdict obtained by Virag in the last year that included a 3.5-million-dollar verdict against PLB Management, and a $546,000 verdict in October against the Hilton Garden Inn in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, whose clients were exposed to bed bugs for a one-night hotel stay.

Sixteen former and current residents of one of Los Angeles’ largest apartment complexes won a $3.5-million verdict over an infestation of bedbugs in their units last year, Virag told the Los Angeles Times.

Park La Brea Apartments, a sprawling complex with more than 4,000 units in the Miracle Mile District, was found liable by a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court last year said Virag, who represented the plaintiffs.