My Bed Bug Lawyer sounds like the title of an un-aired Saturday Night Live skit, but in this instance it refers to an Encino law firm that is suing Disney because a client was allegedly bitten by bedbugs at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.
Among My Bed Bug Lawyer Inc. founder and CEO Brian Virag’s other current clients is Sabrina Jales St. Pierre, who contends in her lawsuit that she was out of work as a Victoria’s Secret model for two months after serving as a bedbug meal at the Embassy Suites Palm Desert.
Ivy Eldridge, who resides in the Inland Empire, visited the Disneyland Hotel for two nights in April and was left with bites on her ears, face, neck, back and arms, according to her complaint filed earlier this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Citing physical, emotional and financial injuries, Eldridge seeks unspecified monetary and punitive damages in her suit against Disneyland Hotel, the Walt Disney Co. and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
So far, the Mouse’s reps aren’t squawking.
Allegations and legal action involving bedbugs in Disney Resort hotels are commonplace, as readers learned in my September 2016 story, “It’s a Large World After All When It Comes to Bed Bug Complaints in Anaheim.” My jumping off point was a San Leandro family’s suit that claimed an August 2014 stay at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa left them with bedbug bites.
At that time, other Grand Californian guests had reported bed bugs in September 2010, January 2011, April 2011, June 2011, some time before June 10, 2011, January 2012, July 2012, April 2013 and some time before Aug. 20, 2013. Guests of the same hotel also reported to the online Bed Bug Registry of being bitten by something, but did not specifically say bed bugs, in May 2011, June 2013 and some time before July 30, 2014.
Also at the time of that story, the Bed Bug Registry had reports from the Disneyland Hotel in November 2010 (twice), June 2012, prior to April 2013, some time before Aug. 8, 2014, and February 2015. There were also reports of bites of some kind in June 2012 and April 2015 at Disney’s original Anaheim hotel.
We also checked in back then to Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel, which showed up with Bed Bug Registry reports in April 2008, some time before December 2011, May 2012 and April 2015 (twice).
Good thing A Bug’s Land closed at Disney California Adventure last September.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.