A vacationing Ohio woman started the morning of August 3, 2023 by enjoying a cup of freshly brewed coffee on the deck of her beautiful short-term rental.
“This beautiful house is away from it all with all the modern conveniences,” the listing for the property in Tallmansville, West Virginia read. “Come make memories that will last a lifetime in this Buckhannon River cottage.”
But the memory that Rejena Boyd, 52, took with her is one she would much rather forget, according to a lawsuit the Cleveland-area resident filed this month.
“Within an hour of ingesting the coffee, Plaintiff developed tingling in her mouth and gums and began to get hives,” Boyd’s complaint states.
Boyd, who used VRBO to book the home advertised to prospective guests as “Heaven on a River,” says in her complaint that when she went back inside and opened the coffeemaker, “to her horror, recognized it was infested with cockroaches.”
“Plaintiff ingested an unknown amount of what appeared to be juvenile cockroaches, cockroach eggs and/or cockroach feces in her coffee,” the September 8 complaint contends.
Four days later, Boyd came down with a rash and went to an urgent care clinic, where the complaint says she was told the condition had been caused by “an allergic reaction to roach ingestion.”
A week after that, Boyd began to feel “lethargic, itchy, [and] achy,” her face and eyes swelled up, “and she began to get hives and was having difficulty breathing,” according to the complaint.
When she went back to the doctor, Boyd was given a diagnosis of chronic urticaria, “due to juvenile cockroach and cockroach feces ingestion,” leaving her with what the complaint describes as a “permanent injury.”
In an email, a VRBO spokesperson told The Independent that the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The attorney representing the couple who own “Heaven on a River” did not respond to requests for comment. The listing for the property states: “Due to extreme allergies, this house is completely animal free. We cannot have animals of any kind in this house.”
Boyd’s suit was filed September 3 in Upshur County, West Virginia Circuit Court and removed to federal court on September 8. Through a representative, Boyd declined to comment.
Cockroaches, which are collectively known as an “intrusion,” have certain proteins in their saliva and feces, and on their body parts, that can act as allergens in up to 41 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Germs and bacteria from a cockroach’s gut can cause urinary tract infections, digestive problems, and sepsis, experts say.
Their droppings are “easy to spot,” according to Terminix, which goes on to describe smaller cockroaches’ waste as “brown or black specks, which range in appearance from resembling coarse coffee grains to finely ground black pepper,” while explaining that larger cockroaches “leave behind solid feces shaped like cylinders.”
“If the infestation is very large, it may be best to discard small electric and electronic appliances such as coffee pots, alarm clocks, etc,” pest-control giant Orkin recommends. “These provide excellent hiding places for roaches, and it is virtually impossible to treat the appliance with any treatment product.”
A cockroach-feces infested VRBO rental in the Bahamas made headlines in 2016, with grossed-out tenants describing how they discovered “sandy dirt” in all of the cabinets and drawers, later learning that the substance was in fact cockroach feces.
Coffeemakers provide ideal living conditions for cockroaches, which are attracted to dark, moist spaces near available food sources.
Boyd’s complaint argues that a guest in a rental home “relies on the owners and/or operators… to provide a safe place to live,” and that Lanette and George Karnes, who own the home owed a duty of care “to the people that drink coffee from the coffee makers… in the rental home to assure that their coffee would be free of roaches and roach feces.”
The existence of roaches, roach eggs, and roach feces-infested coffee makers on their premises in fact constituted “grossly negligent conditions” that violate multiple state, federal and local building codes and health regulations, and run counter to industry standards and guidelines, according to the complaint.
But, a “lack of pest control maintenance” by the Karnses “caused [Boyd] to ingest roaches and roach feces, causing her to suffer serious, permanent injury,” as well as “annoyance, inconvenience, anxiety, aggravation, mental anguish, humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, [and] a loss in ability to perform daily activities,” the complaint states.
Short-term rentals can be a moneymaker for homeowners with extra space or investment properties, but can also open them up to a range of liability lawsuits.
Last year, three members of the same New York family drowned while staying at a lakefront Airbnb, leading to a lawsuit that blamed the homeowner for not warning guests about a dangerous 18-foot underwater dropoff just yards from shore.
Others have sued over hidden cameras placed in short-term rentals, including one couple who claimed an “intimate moment” they shared in bed had been captured by a video recorder disguised as a smoke detector.
On the other side of the coin, hosts have sued guests, as well. In one instance, an Upstate New York woman went after a group of international students last October after she accused them of doing some $200,000 in damage to her craftsman-style house. The case is ongoing.
Apart from the medical expenses Boyd has already incurred, and will purportedly continue to incur into the future, her complaint claims she has endured physical and mental pain and suffering, suffered a loss of earning capacity, and has been unable to enjoy life as usual.
Boyd, who is demanding a jury trial, is seeking compensation for her alleged roach-induced distress, including special damages and general damages for negligence, as well as punitive damages “in an amount sufficient to punish the Defendants for their grossly negligent and reckless conduct and deter like conduct in the future,” plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
VRBO and Emerald Isle, LLC, the Karneses corporation, are both listed as defendants in the case. They have not yet filed formal responses to Boyd’s allegations.
