If the thought of bed bugs make your skin crawl, you may not want to read the rest of this article!
We took instructions from Miss B after she sustained bed bug bites following a stay at a London hotel; she was able to confirm that the bugs had come from the hotel bed after they were found there during the stay! Unfortunately she suffered from the physical marks of the bed bug bites on the skin as well as suffering from disturbed sleep for a while.
Bed bug bite claims can actually be very hard to pursue for two reasons – one is that it can be difficult to prove that they actually originated from the bed of whoever you are wanting to claim against; and secondly the injuries don’t often last very long. Evidence can be key in these cases, and winning a claim can come down to whether you can prove where the bed bugs originated from, or it could come down to notice of the issue.
If you want to claim against a landlord then it can come down to what notice the landlord may have had about the bed bug problem, as well as how they managed to get there. But in cases where you are staying at a public location there is of course a duty of care and you would expect that the owners of the property maintain and clean the premises to stop such occurrences.
When it comes to the injuries not lasting very long, this can make it hard to pursue with a law firm. For us to be able to recover our fees from the other side the claim needs to be worth at least £1,000 – and we can loosely predict this where injuries will, or have, lasted for a minimum of around four to six weeks. In many cases bed bug bites may settle down after a week or so which means the value may be less than £1,000, so we wouldn’t be able to recover our fees from the opponent.
In these kinds of scenarios you may need to pursue a case yourself, but it’s still worth contacting a lawyer as there are things we can still do for you.
In the case of Miss B the insurers admitted liability for the incident and we were able to obtain expert medical evidence to show the extent of the injury and loss. Luckily for Miss B her injuries were fairly minor and she wasn’t left with any unsightly long term scarring, which can sometimes happen with bed bug bite injuries.
The insurers were fairly quick to come forward with a good offer for settlement in the sum of £1,050 which our client was more than happy to accept. We settled the case in a relatively short period of time as we were firm in our arguments in our initial letters to the Defendant in which we invited their early admission of liability.
For advice and help for bed bug bite compensation claims, or for any other types of accidents or injuries, call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 7575 today.
