Trials & Litigation
Class Action Allowed in Bedbug Suit; Apartment Residents Say New Landlords Shunned Them
An Iowa judge has certified a class action filed on behalf of about 300 current and former residents of two Des Moines apartment buildings who say their landlord failed to combat a growing bedbug infestation.
The suit claimed the buildings for elderly and disabled residents first experienced a bedbug problem in late 2007, the Des Moines Register reports. Residents have complained they had to trash infested furniture and couldn’t move out because landlords and relatives shunned them. “Everybody sleeps on the floor,” one resident said in an interview last year.
According to court documents, the problem wasn’t solved until last year when new exterminators used 120-degree heat to kill the insects, the newspaper says.
