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Bedbug Lawsuits

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A lawsuit filed against Marriott International in Cook County, Illinois last month has people saying BLECH. Bedbugs.

Two women filed a lawsuit claiming that a now closed Marriott Conference Hotel in Illinois failed to provide sanitary rooms or recognize signs of its bedbug infestation.

The lawsuit is the most recent in a spate of lawsuits over bedbugs including a Baltimore-area lawsuit in which a jury awarded nearly a quarter of a million dollars and multimillion dollar suits against landlords, hotels, and retailers.

The most common claims in these lawsuits are that the hotel or landlord was negligent in preventing the harm to the victim, or that it committed fraud by claiming to have taken extermination action when it did not.

But rather than having to file a lawsuit, if you are traveling take precautions: Google the name of the hotel and the word bedbug and see if anything comes up. Pull the fitted sheet away from the mattress before lying in it. And when you get home, never put your suitcases on your bed to unpack, instead take them to a place in your home away from carpets, or upholstery and wash the clothes you had in the hotel before you sleep in your own bed. Night night. Don't let the...nevermind.

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