Judge Denies Punitives for Bedbug Plaintiffs, But Lets Case Go to Trial

[WSJ_law_blog]

Good night, sleep tight,
Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
And if they do
Then take your shoe
And knock ‘em ‘til
They’re black and blue!



Of all the things that go bump in the night, bedbugs might be the creepiest. But not so creepy, apparently, that they lead automatically to punitive damages.

Manhattan judge Judith J. Gische has, uh, scratched a request for punitive damages by two bedbug plaintiffs, while allowing their negligence claims to go forward. Debra Grogan and her daughter, Dana, both Maryland residents, were seeking $2 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified amount of punitives for bites they allegedly sustained during a two-night stay in New York City’s Milford Plaza in 2003. Click here for the gory details of the Grogan case, and here for a 2006 LB post on a different bedbug bite case.

In ruling out punitive damages, Gische distinguished a precedent on the grounds that, in a past case where the plaintiffs had won punis, the hotel in question had been aware of the bedbugs but decided not to fumigate the premises. Milford Plaza, by contrast, had under contract a pest control company, which, three weeks prior to the Grogan’s stay, had been asked to exterminate bedbugs in two rooms near the room reserved by the Grogans.

However, Judge 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’ summary judgment motion. 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.”

Milford Plaza is represented by Andrew J. Funk of Smith Mazure, while the Grogans are represented by Hayley R. Greenberg of Greenberg & Merola.