The Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday announced that sixteen former and current residents of Park La Brea, one of Los Angeles’s largest apartment complexes, won a $3.5 million lawsuit over mental anguish suffered due to an infestation of bedbugs in their units.
“They failed to warn any of the tenants of the original problem,” attorney Brian Virag, who represented the plaintiffs, said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It was mostly won over the sleeplessness, the anxiety and the humiliation they endured at work.” Virag reportedly also won $546,000 in a similar lawsuit against a Rancho Cucamonga hotel in October.
The Los Angeles Times notes that each of the tenants was awarded between $44,000 and $580,000 following five days of deliberations by jurists.
Park La Brea Apartments, which is nestled in the heart of L.A.’s Miracle Mile District, contains over 4,000 units and 18 high-rise towers.
In 2015, LAist wrote an article detailing some of the worst complaints made by residents of the sprawling complex, taken from Yelp. “On Yelp, Park La Brea has a paltry 2-star rating with 206 reviews, which seem to be on both ends of the spectrum, with commenters either hating it completely with one-star reviews or singing its praises with five stars,” LAist wrote.
One of the negative entries, dated Jan. 9, 2015, read, “Roaches. The roach problem at Park La Brea is not a problem it’s an infestation. The roaches are huge and they are everywhere, in the kitchen, the bathrooms, and even on the ceilings. They were so large you could hear them walking on the hardwood floors. I tried everything to stop them.”
Another one, dated Aug. 31, 2014, noted, “HUGE COCKROACH problem — inside the apartment, outside on the sidewalks, EVERYWHERE. We’ve reported the issue OVER A MONTH AGO, the Maintenance Dept. came out and assessed the problem, then told us they’d schedule a fumigation… THIS PLACE IS A JOKE.”
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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