Can a Building Charge You for Bedbugs?

Q: I recently found bugs in my Manhattan co-op apartment and immediately informed my super, who identified them as bedbugs. I told him to inform the board. The exterminator advised me to dispose of some belongings, and to seal floorboards and mattresses, which I did, costing me around $4,000. I then received a $5,000 bill from the co-op board for the cost of treating my apartment and neighboring units. The board claimed that I was responsible for bringing the bed bugs into the building. But I did not — and if I did, it was an accident. Am I really responsible for this bill?

A: Regardless of how the bugs got into your apartment, you did the right thing by immediately notifying management. Had you hidden the problem or acted recklessly, the board might have had a reasonable argument for sending you the cleanup bill. If you did neither of those things, the board should pay for the exterminator because bedbugs are a building problem, and their origin in your apartment is unknown. And the most important thing is that the problem gets fixed.

In order to hold you responsible, your “conduct must be negligent in some respect, such as poor hygiene, hoarding, or bringing in discarded furniture from outside,” said Bruce A. Cholst, a real estate lawyer in the New York City office of the law firm Anderson Kill.

It is, of course, possible that you did bring the bugs in, carrying a hitchhiking critter home from the dry-cleaner, a movie theater, or a hotel. Or maybe they were already in the building, like in the laundry room, on lobby furniture or in the walls or between floorboards.

Either way, unless management took the extraordinary step of inspecting every apartment and all the common areas before your infestation was discovered, “and arrived at an infestation baseline, then there really is no way to say that this person is responsible for the bed bugs,” said Louis N. Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History.

Even though the board is not technically required to pay for the spraying of bugs, billing you for it is the wrong move. Bedbug infestations spread quickly, and the faster a building can address the problem, the better chance it has of resolving it. If residents fear they’ll get hit with a $5,000 bill for speaking up, they may not.

Ask the board to show you evidence that you behaved in a negligent manner. “If the evidence is weak, the board will likely walk away from its claim,” Mr. Cholst said.

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