On Monday, a jury awarded an Arkansas family $546,000 for trauma they said they experienced while staying in a hotel room infested with bedbugs in 2013.
The family’s attorney, Brian Virag, said he believes it is the biggest bedbug payout in U.S. history.
It came after Alex and Martha McKindra, both 63, checked into the Hilton Garden Inn Ontario/Rancho Cucamonga while visiting their son in California.
The family awoke to the bedbugs in the early morning.
Four years later, Virag said Martha McKindra is still afraid of bugs. She thinks about them often, fears hotels and struggles to sleep.
“Others see the marks, and she has to explain,” Virag said. “It’s humiliating because people associate bedbugs with dirtiness.”
Earlier this week, a San Bernardino County Superior Court jury found that Martha McKindra suffered “severe emotional distress” as a result of the night she spent at Rancho Cucamonga.
During a deposition, Virag said the hotel manager acknowledged that the property’s pest policy had not changed three years after the incident. In court, he argued the hotel knew about its infestation and had experienced problems with bedbugs before and after his clients’ 2013 stay.
When it comes to bedbugs, Virag is something of a specialist.
Last spring, Virag of California-based firm My Bedbug Lawyer won $104,000 for a family with an apartment infestation and $463,000 for a plaintiff who suffered between 500 and 1,000 bites.
But none of the payouts come compare to the most recent verdict, which Virag credits to the distress his clients suffered and their credibility as witnesses.
"They were Hilton Honors members," he said. "This was a situation of betrayal."