Is punitive bedbug award a bloodsucking amount?

Three years ago Burl and Desiree Mathias checked into a motel in downtown Chicago. Two weeks ago they checked out, so to speak, with a judgment in their favor for $382,000. They had been bitten by bedbugs, and they bit the bedbugs back.

The case of Mathias v. Accor Economy Lodging will raise a few eyebrows, not because of the bedbugs but because of the jury's award. For the record, the bedbug (Cimex lectularius) is "a wingless bloodsucking hemipterous bug sometimes infesting houses and especially beds and feeding on human blood." Not even flea-size at first, the insect grows up to be almost as big as a ladybug. From the Dictionary of American Regional English we learn that the pest is known throughout the South as the chinch or chinchbug. The critter achieved taxonomic classification in the early 1800s. That is all you need to know about the bedbug.

Burl and Desiree Mathias, middle-aged brother and sister, own and operate a small business in Toronto. They came to Chicago three years ago this month for a trade show. Motel 6, on Ontario Street a block east of Michigan Avenue, offered a convenient location. Alas, their Room 504 offered something else: It offered bedbugs. The visitors were badly bitten.

When their complaints could not be resolved, they brought suit in U.S. District Court. There a jury heard testimony that management was well aware of its bedbug problem. An exterminating company offered to spray every room for $500, but nothing came of the offer. The motel manager urged top management to act, but top management procrastinated. Desk clerks were instructed to tag certain rooms, "Do not rent — bugs in room." Room 504, indeed, was flagged "Do not rent until treated," but clerks rented it anyway. Guests who complained were told that the insects were not bedbugs but rather "ticks." Ticks were somehow thought to be less offensive.

One remarkable incident was recounted at trial: A guest who complained of bugs was moved to a second room. When that room also proved to be infested, he was moved to yet a third room. That, too, suffered from bugs in the bedding. On to a fourth! Circuit Judge Richard Posner, reviewing the case last month, thought it "odd that at that point he didn't flee the motel."

The motel's conduct, said Posner, was "outrageous." It approached the level of gross negligence, indeed of "recklessness." Some of the motions by defense counsel were "frivolous," and counsel's defense of them was "pertinacious." Posner was in top form. Judges Michael S. Kanne and Terence T. Evans joined his opinion.