Bed Bugs at Hotel Left Man Physically, Mentally Scarred: Lawsuit

An Ohio man is seeking more than $50,000 in damages and court costs after he was allegedly bitten by bed bugs in not one, but two rooms at the Courtyard Marriott Chicago Downtown/River North last summer.

Allen Brown filed suit against the hotel chain last month in Cook County, alleging he counted 130 bites on his feet, arms and torso during his Aug. 16, 2016 hotel stay.

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Brown claims he was moved to a second room after notifying hotel staff that he had been bitten, only to be attacked by bed bugs in his second room as well, NBC Chicago reported.

The suit claims the hotel rented the rooms knowing they were infested and failed to conduct reasonable inspection of its rooms, according to NBC.

"My hands were swollen. My feet were swollen. I couldn’t shower," Brown, who said he suffered physical and mental scars from the incident, reportedly claimed. " ... It’s excruciating."

A month after Brown’s hotel stay, the CTA pulled a rail car off the Red Line after a rider discovered bed bugs in one of the seats. A Reddit user posted photos and wrote about discovering the pests while riding the line towards the Loop on Sept. 26, 2016. In December, another report of possible bed bugs on the Red Line surfaced.

Brown’s lawsuit was filed just more than a week before Orkin issued its Top 50 Bed Bug Cities report for 2016. After being ranked the worst city for bed bugs for four years straight, Chicago has dropped to No. 3 on the list.

According to Bedbugregistry.com – a website that collects customer reports of bed bug-infested hotels and motels – Marriott was the among the top 10 “buggiest” hotel chains, according to the unverified customer reports. With 395 traveler-submitted reports, the chain is No. 7 on the list, while Holiday Inn is No. 1, with 732 reports.

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Photo: Bed bug bites, taken by Hermann Luyken, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Inset: Photo via Centers for Disease Control | Wikimedia Commons.