A commercial pilot from California awoke in the middle of the night last August to a swarm of bats in his Denver hotel room, one of which bit him on the foot, leading to expensive rabies treatment, according to a lawsuit filed last month in Colorado state court.
Staff members at the hotel, a downtown Sheraton, refused to provide the pilot with a new room after the creatures were discovered, according to the suit, which was filed against Sheraton and its parent company, Marriott International.
The staff did not “adequately repair” an opening below the room’s air-conditioning unit through which the bats had appeared to enter, forcing the pilot to try to stuff the hole with a towel, the suit says.
The plaintiff, whose name is being withheld at the request of his lawyer, Edward Lomena, because of the pilot’s concerns about his job security, is a 46-year-old married father of one living in Anaheim. He did not contract rabies, Mr. Lomena said.
The pilot is asking for damages sufficient to cover his medical expenses — about $102,000, according to the suit — as well the “pain and suffering” he experienced as result of the bat episode and its aftermath, his lawyer said.
Marriott International and Childs McCune Michalek, the law firm representing the company, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Lomena said in an interview on Thursday that he had tried to negotiate a settlement with Marriott before suing, but that the company’s offer “wasn’t even a quarter of what the medical bills were.”
Marriott, Mr. Lomena said, did not take his client’s claims seriously, arguing that no one was ultimately at fault for the bats.
But, he said, things like that don’t just happen. “If they did, we’d hear about it all the time.”
Mr. Lomena’s client was in Colorado for professional training sessions last year and was staying at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel for a couple of days before the bats arrived early in the morning on Aug. 30, he said.
His client woke up to a “commotion” around 2:30 a.m. or 3 a.m. and realized there were multiple bats — he couldn’t tell exactly how many — flying around his room, Mr. Lomena said.
The pilot called the hotel’s maintenance staff, who worked to remove the bats, though the hotel refused to offer him a new room given the early hour, according to Mr. Lomena.
His client eventually went back to bed after plugging the hole below the air-conditioning unit, thinking the room was free of bats. But when he awoke, he discovered that a single bat remained in the corner of the room, Mr. Lomena said.
The pilot called animal control, which captured the bat and told him to seek treatment immediately for possible rabies exposure, saying two bats in the area tested positive for the deadly disease in the past month, according to his lawyer.
His client was terrified. “His initial reaction was, Am I going to die from this?” Mr. Lomena said.
After receiving an initial round of rabies treatment that same day, the pilot flew home to California that night. Soon after arriving, he noticed a bite mark from a bat on his foot, Mr. Lomena said.
Though his client does not know exactly which bat bit him, he learned days later — after more rounds of rabies treatment — that the final bat found in his room had tested negative for the disease, Mr. Lomena said.
He said on Saturday that his client had health insurance and had not paid anything out of pocket for the rabies treatment, which he acknowledged was unusually high. “I can’t tell you why his was so expensive,” he said.
If his client is successful in his suit, at least a portion of the damages would be paid to his insurer, Mr. Lomena said.
Cases of human rabies are rare in the United States and fewer than 10 deaths from the disease are reported each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But 70 percent of those who die do so after contact with infected bats, according to the agency. Other wildlife carriers of the disease include raccoons, skunks and foxes.