What Is A Management Company's Legal Responsibility To Eradicate Bed Bugs?

Question

My friend moved to London and left me responsible for her apartment.

I get a call from the sublettee this morning stating that there are bed bugs in the entire building. This has become a growing problem in New York City.

What do I need to do...on behalf of my friend to solve this problem...quickly. I need to know the law before I call up the management company or petition the building.

1. Subletting is legal.
2. Apartment was furnished...mattress and bed were brand spanking new.
3. Extermination clause...I don’t know.
4. Pia (my best friend) has lived there for 10 years; she handled everything with the landlord directly.

I think you are misunderstanding...someone else in the building brought the bedbugs in...not Pia nor her sublettee. However, they spread from apartment to apartment. The sublettee understandably wants to move out if the problem is not resolved. Therefore, I want to see that the entire building is fumigated. I will take care of the bed and cleaning my self...but I need the entire building fumigated ASAP.

Answer 1

If management is unwilling to deal with the issue I would let them know that I was contacting the health department! If no reslts from them, contact an exterminator!

Answer 2

You left out a lot of details.
1. Is your friend legally able to sublet her particular apartment? It is in her lease.

2. Was the apartment furnished or is this the tenant's mattress?

3. Is there an extermination clause in the lease as some sort of maintenance or rental fee? You really need that lease.

4. Is there some sort of lease owner's association or are problems handled individually?

and 5. Do you have a POA for your friend allowing you to exercise her rights while she is away?

You need to figure all these thing out before you proceed.

If subletting is illegal than all of the responcibility for damages and inconvenience is your friends. You friend can get money back from the land lord if there is something in the lease that says exterminating is management's responsibility. Of course you need to make sure that your friend did not prevent the landlord from ewxterminating that apartment. if that is the case your friend still has to pay for it all. And the sad part is she may have to get the landlord to do it for her and pay the landlord at that point. I am guessing that the landlord will have to exterminate the entire building and charg your friend for the cost of exterminating her one apartment, assuming she or her sublettees prevented the landlord from properly exterminating the entire building as sceduled. If it turns out that the mattress has to be thrown away then that becomes your friends problem especially if it is not her mattress. It is doubtful that you will get anyone to convincingly accuse the sublettee of creating the infestation. You friend will be the culpable party. And if there is a lease owners association she may have to go through channels to get anything done, she probably meaning you, which is assuming you have power of attorney to execute affairs on her behalf. The other parties involved are under no obligation to deal with you if you have no written or verbal authority compelling them to do so.

In short, assume your friend is to blame and and solve the problem first and figure out if she can be reinbursed afterwards.

BTW, in the short term get some Lysol and clorox. Use the Lysol on the furniture and dilute the clorox and usit on the matress. And get some boric acid as well. These will slow down the biting for a while while the exterminators get something done. Sure, you never did any of this on record should they ask and you are supposed to let the manager do this stuff, but, your objective is to get rid of the bugs first and foremost.

I read what others sent you and that is the tip of the iceberg situation. I am looking at the other things that can go wrong so that they don't.

Good luck with the problem and tell your friend she owes you a big present when she gets back.


Follow up:

Start with the apartment, not the building.

Ask the landlord what can be done about the apartment and if he/she will do it or if you can and how long this will take and if there are restrictions on who you can use or what you can do to fumigate the place.

This will give you a chance to look at the lease to be certain that subletting is legal in that building and the fumigation is the responsibility of the landlord alone. Some maintenance agreements prevent you from so much as hammering a nail in a wall to hang a picture.

As for the petition idea, while not without merit, leases in general make complaints such as this several, meaning you can not use a collective bargaining technique to solve your joint complaints with the complex. You have to speak with each lease holder individually and get them to go to the landlord and request fumigation.

BTW, fumigation implies that the tenants have to move out for at least 24 hours maybe 48 and it will require that all tenants be prepared to have to clean up a tremendous mess afterwards. Roaches an vermin infest in wall near the top and stay there. You will never deal with them if you never fumigate, but if you do; they will come out to die as the fumes go up the building. Roaches are not a problem, you dispose of them easily. Vermin may be a problem if they die in the walls. That requires opening the wall, cleaning things out, and resurfacing the wall. Can you see why a landlord would want to avoid such a procedure.

In the good old days they did as I told and cleaned the apartment thoroughly with lysol and clorox, taking the mattress out to clean it and sun it for a day as well as the upholstered furniture, (drycleaning is another option), and then they exterminated with boric acid to detour roaches, bedbugs, and other from coming back into that apartment. Always remember to set up a perimeter of insecticide to protect the apartment.

You can't be certain that the tenant did not cause the infestation. You weren't living there and you don't know their hygiene habits.

You do know that anything in the apartment is disposible being as your friend own the furnishings. You would just have to find out what dump to have it taken to.

BTW, you don't need a lawyer to tell you what is written in the lease or that your name is not on the lease. At three to five hundred dollars an hour for a consultation that would make this problem bigger than it should be.

You used the word "quickly" to describe your appoach to the problem.

I say clean it up yourself and pay a guy to exterminate to place monthly. That should be enough.

Otherwise hire a lawyer, fight the brave fight and expect it to take months instead of minutes to fix the problem.

FYI, I used to trust exterminators until I had an infestation that came in with some upholstery fabric I was planning on using to make curtains and cover furniture,(Yes, I can do that too), and the exterminators sprayed time and time again and missed the problem until I stumbled upon it nad had to take care of it myself. I went to the pesticide store and bought the equiptment and the supplies necessary to exterminate the entire house and yards. Since that point I do my own spraying inside and out and haven't seen anything other than a spider, a lizard, or a bird, telling me that they are eating what is left of the other bugs, and that is outside not inside.

The problem here is the bugs and not the lease, and while I have discussed both, I would recomend you focus on the former and not the latter.

And oh yea, for the person who suggested a lawyer, bring the lease and a power of attorney or he won't be able to help you and if you have those documents then all you are paying for is a second opinion, the first being your own.

One more thing, I think I told you about the "The Elephant dung and the Great Circular Track of Life" (If not you can ask me later), but you could remember that philosophy and apply it here and get the tenant to solve the problem for you and then all you have to do is the accounting for what it cost thenm versus how much they pay in rent each month. Welcome to the path of least resistance.

Answer 3

I have successfully treated many flats for bed bug infestations. It takes a bit of time and some disturbance to do it properly. This includes heating all bedding and other soft furnishings to 75C for 2 hours and an insecticidal treatment. I do not know anything about the housing laws in the USA so I am unable to comment on the second part of your question, however, in the UK I feel than an unresolved bed bug infestation would be reasonable grounds to terminate your contract.

Answer 4

Spending some money and getting Valid ,genuine and result oriented Advice from Legal Eagle would be the Best thing I would do than to depend upon the Trial and Error Answers of Such a grave nature on Yahoo...

Answer 5

If it's a matter of complete infestation, the management company is responsible to do whatever they have to do to get rid of the bedbugs. I'm sure they dont want a lot of lawsuits and they certainly dont want the bad press. I have to imagine that the majority of the tenants will want to have a bug free zone. Management company may try to tell you it's up to the individual tenant. This is when you go to the press. It may have been one apartment's problem, but it's everybody's now.

Answer 6

If you wanted to know your legal rights, you should contact a local attorney. But, you should probably just ask the management company to do something about it first. Usually, if it's a halfway reputable company, they'll send someone out.