New York hotels and stores continue to experience an outbreak of bed bugs. The most recent is Victoria’s Secret, which was forced to close for a de-bugging.
The infestation of bed bugs have already led to litigation against hotels in New York, London, and other cities. There are even websites dedicated to such litigation.
Other stores including Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister have been forced to close down temporarily due to infestations in New York.
Unlike hotels, such retailers face more of a marketing than a legal threat. It is difficult as a matter of causation to link a retailer to a small number of bugs. Hotels are often easier to prove as sources of such bugs found later in homes or responsible for bites during hotel stays.
Source: NBC.
There is a highly effective treatment against bedbugs, but EPA regulations are now limiting its use and may permanently halt availability.
And, the obligatory legal angle: once your house has had bedbugs, the mandatory disclosure laws of some jurisdictions will make it all but impossible to resell the house at market rate.
Expect to see an ever-increasing number of bedbug-related lawsuits as people begin to understand the immense economic damage an infestation inflicts on a property owner. Homeowners will sue their houseguests for having brought in an infestation. Homebuyers will sue sellers for undisclosed infestations. And deep-pocketed hotel chains will face by far the greatest exposure (which, hopefully, will cause them to lead the way in funding innovative bedbug control R&D — but more realistically, they’ll just opt for the more cost-effective option of lobbying the legislatures to pass laws granting them immunity for liability).
As a note: bedbug infestations aren’t spread by unclean conditions. They’re spread by carrying your suitcase/clothing from an infested room.
NYC is a bedbug mecca because of its huge numbers of world travelers. Even the richest, cleanest travelers can and do carry bedbugs home with them. In fact, the rich are ESPECIALLY vulnerable, simply because they’re likely to travel more often to more places.
And once bedbugs infest a room, it’s extremely hard to eradicate them. Basically, *everything* in the room has to be cleaned, superheated, or thrown away, in addition to the more familiar extermination efforts. And during the weeks/months it takes to kill all the bugs (and their eggs), you have to continue to sleep in the infested bedroom, because if the bugs lose their good source (you!), they’ll spread out throughout the building in search of food (other people), making the infestation worse.
We’re all going to get to learn a lot more about these truly nightmarish bugs in the next decade, as the epidemic spreads.
i guess the big apple has more than worms
I would have thought that all the formaldehyde in their bras would have killed those suckers!
Yuck! I had a horrible reaction to bedbugs at the Hilton Hawaiian Village this summer. The only way to really get rid of them is DDT- I’m sure we’ll see progress on that when they reach
DC.
Victoria’s “Secrets” gives Bed Bugs with every purpose………..or was that purchase….
1 thought, 1 tip;
exquisite cleanliness
diatomaceous earth
second thought;
potential byproduct of mass immigration
One of the most hilarious stories ever, about inadvertent contact with bedbugs, is related in “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” by Cornelia Otis Skinner, the story of two young things off on a tour of Europe in the 1920’s. They encounter bedbugs in a Paris hotel and the results wreak havoc on their agenda.
So THAT’S the secret!
Yuk!