His medical bills exceed $60,000. He nearly lost his left leg, and now it has permanent hyperpigmentation (discoloration) in that leg. If he goes to a public pool or hot tub, people look at him like, “is that man going to give me a disease?” He cannot stand or engage in any other physical activity for more than short periods of time or his leg will begin to swell and he will experience significant discomfort. He has to wear uncomfortable compression socks for the rest of his life to prevent the swelling from getting out of control. This man is one of the nicest people I know and a former bishop.

The hotel’s insurance company tried to say his leg injury was due to a preexisting condition. We deposed their expert doctor who admitted that while the patient probably had preexisting venous insufficiency, it is a common condition diagnosed in 20-30 million Americans (iirc) and undiagnosed in countless others and since the patient had lived over 60 years without experiencing any symptoms yet in his life, he very well would have lived his entire life without any symptoms were it not for the bug bites and related infection acting as a triggering event. We have information from an outside bedbug remediation company that they visited this room prior to our client’s stay, but the hotel did not close off the room to guests. It kept letting people rent the room despite knowing bed bugs had been reported there.

The case is still in litigation.

Edit: In depositions we learned that the only checking for bed bugs is done by the housekeeping staff. The housekeeping staff is not paid by the hour, they are paid per room. I believe the rate is (or, at the relevant time, was) $10 per room. So if they clean one room per hour, that’s $10/hour. If they clean three rooms in an hour, that’s $30/hour. You can imagine how closely they check for bedbugs with the financial incentive to finish their work as quickly as possible.