Across the state of Arkansas, bed bug infestations have made traveling a nightmare and have given many new apartment hunters reason to be wary. Residents and transient visitors of Little Rock, Fayetteville, and Fort Smith have issued personal injury claims hoping to receive compensation for injuries and damages sustained by bed bugs. Negligent property owners have done little to help the problem, and we feel that these establishments should be held to high standards and be subjected to fines and further lawsuits if they don’t clean up their acts.
A Surprise of Bed Bugs
After spending a day wandering Little Rock, you finally find a hotel with a vacancy sign in the window. Exhausted, you rent a room and immediately fall asleep, but when you wake up, you notice some spots of blood on the sheets. You don’t think anything of it, believing you may have just scratched yourself while you slept, but when you turn over and look closer at the headboard, you can see discoloration and what looks like little white spots. Upon closer inspection, you notice that the white spots look like eggs, and the discoloration is brown and black spots.
At this point, we hope you realized it was a pest problem. Bed bugs, to be exact.
What to Do in the Case of Bed Bugs
Once you realize that you are in the middle of a bed bug infested room, you should take initiative and document all the evidence you can: turn over the mattress and snap photos of the nests, which will have shredded skins, defecation, and scampering bed bugs; examine the headboard and baseboard and see where they hide; overturn the couch cushions and check to see if they spread to other pieces of furniture; and peel back the electrical outlets to determine if they made a home in the warm, dark spot between the plastic and the wall.
Take photos of any spot that looks infested, snap pictures of the blood on the sheets, and if you already have bites appearing on your skin, make sure to get images of those, as well. All of this information will come in handy when filing a personal injury claim regarding bed bugs.
What you do not do is immediately alert management before documenting all of this evidence. If you do, they are likely to alert cleaning staff and move you to another room, or ask you to wait elsewhere while they scrub the place down. They may not even let you back in, as they are aware that anything they miss can be used against them. It’s a sly technique, but you should avoid it as best you can by alerting them to the fact later rather than sooner.
After Being Bitten
In the event that you suffered bed bug bites, first make sure that they are, in fact, from bed bugs, and not from mosquitoes. Bed bugs usually bite in a pattern, zig zag or diagonal; the bites don’t often show up for a few days, as the creatures’ saliva has a numbing agent and anticoagulant property in it. You may not know you’ve been bitten until you’ve returned from a trip. However, some bites are faster-acting than others and can show up sooner.
You should immediately seek medical treatment from a physician to make sure there are no further problems with the bites. There’s a chance that bed bugs can transmit disease or carry infection, and you should make absolutely certain that you were not exposed to anything potentially dangerous while abroad.
Causes of Bed Bugs
The primary reason bed bug infestations are as prevalent as they are is due to the negligence of property owners. They do not harp on cleaning staff to be more meticulous in their duties or thoroughly examine rooms after they’ve been sanitized. Landlords, too, do not want to pay extra money to fumigate rooms. Essentially, these owners wish to cut costs wherever they can while maximizing profits, and they do so at the mercy of their visitors’ and tenants’ wellbeing.
Contrary to common belief, bed bugs do not necessarily dwell in dirty or filthy places; it just so happens that the locations they are most prevalent are also dirty because those in charge are negligent in their cleaning responsibilities. Bed bugs can just as easily be found in a grand hotel, but there’s a much higher chance that they would not be seen there again after the initial complaint – management knows that a bed bug claim can drive business into the ground, and would immediately seek to correct the issue.
Possible Compensation for a Bed Bug Lawsuit
If you have suffered through a bed bug infestation while traveling abroad at a hotel in Arkansas or you were subjected to a dirty apartment by a negligent landlord, you may be eligible for compensation through a personal injury claim. If you suffer bed bug bites and must endure medical treatment, must throw away furniture or personal belongings, or must lose time and wages due to hospitalization or relocation, your compensation settlement may be sizeable.
The Proper Firm for You
Our law firm has taken on numerous cases of bed bug lawsuits across the state of Arkansas. Our team is knowledgeable on the ins and outs of personal injury claims and what the best route to a settlement is. For all of our clients, we offer a free legal consultation to discuss a potential bed bug lawsuit and the possible outcomes of a settlement. We can help you figure out the way forward and inform you of the entire litigation process. A personal injury claim can be drawn out and frustrating to follow, and as a result, we recommend allowing an experienced attorney represent you.
Additionally, we offer a zero fee guarantee for our services. This means if we cannot net you any compensation for your lawsuit against a property owner or hotel management for bed bugs, you do not owe us any money. We take pride in our abilities and we are confident enough to say that we can win any case presented to us, and to back that up, we risk taking a loss. If you don’t get paid, we don’t; it is unfair to expect to be rewarded for losses in court.
Contact us today and we will help you sort through your bed bug lawsuit.
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