Tenant Claims Emotional Distress Due to Bedbugs

Tenant sued landlord for personal injury and emotional distress, claiming that her apartment was infested with bedbugs and that she had been bitten. The court denied landlord's request to dismiss the case without a trial and dismissed some of tenant's claims before trial. Tenant appealed and lost. The lack of medical treatment, while significant when determining damages, didn't require dismissal outright of tenant's claim for personal injuries. But tenant didn't show that landlord's failure to maintain the property in a reasonably safe condition unreasonably endangered her physical safety or caused her to fear for her safety so as to support a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress. And landlord's leasing of the apartment to tenant while aware of a bedbug history didn't rise to the level of outrageous conduct required to sustain a claim for infliction of emotional distress, especially since at the time the case was started landlord had no legal obligation to notify prospective tenants of the bedbug history at the building. There also were no grounds for tenant's claim that landlord was "morally culpable" and subject to punitive damages.

Bour v. 259 Bleecker LLC: 104 A.D.3d 454, 2013 NY Slip Op 01488 (App. Div. 1 Dept; 3/12/13; Mazzarelli, JP, Acosta, Freedman, Richter, Gische, JJ)