I have my own litmus test for whether a personal injury verdict is reasonable. I think, “Would I be willing to suffer the injury in exchange for the payment?”

Almost always, my answer ranges from “No” to “Oh my god never, that poor, poor person.”

And then there's this case. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, a jury in San Bernardino County, California just awarded a family a record $546,000 for being bitten by bed bugs during a one-night stay at a Hilton Garden Inn.

No medical bills. No property damage. Just emotional distress from the bug bites plus $50,000 in punitive damages.

“It's sending shock waves through the industry,” said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian Virag, founder of My BedBug Lawyers, whose entire practice is devoted to bed bug litigation. (Yes, that's a niche. He even has competitors including Bed Bug Legal Group and Bed Bug Lawyers.)

It's certainly unpleasant to be bitten by bed bugs. Healthline says “Bed bug bites are often very itchy. You may experience a burning sensation on the skin several days after you've been bitten. You won't feel the bugs bite you because they excrete a tiny amount of anesthesia into your body before they bite. If you scratch the bite, you may cause a secondary infection that can lead to swelling and bleeding.”

So yeah, that's a bummer. And it's definitely gross to think of bugs crawling on you while you're asleep. Also, they can hitch a ride in your suitcase and infest your home, though that's not what happened here.

Still, would I personally take half a million bucks for some bites? Even a lot of bites?

You betcha.

The verdict amounts to a home run for Virag, whose success correlates directly to his willingness to take cases to trial. He said the defendants—the hotel franchise owners and their insurer Liberty Mutual, represented by James Sohn of the Law Office of George Muhar—had offered him $10,000 to settle the case before trial.

They should have known (like bed bugs) that was not going to fly.

After all, Virag racked up a $463,000 jury verdict earlier this year in a bed bug case in Los Angeles County Superior Court after declining a $2,000 settlement offer. A jury in Bakersfield, California jury also recently awarded his bug-bitten clients $104,000.

“I've been taking cases to juries, and finding that they're open and receptive to pain and suffering” awards, he said.

The most recent case was brought on behalf of an Arkansas family, Alex and Martha McKindra, and their adult son Marcus. The parents were bringing a car to Marcus, who was serving in the reserves at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The trio stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rancho Cucamonga, California on March 16, 2013.

Martha McKindra woke up at 4 am, Virag said. “She felt something on her neck. It was a bed bug feeding on her blood. She caught it and squashed it,” he said, getting blood on the sheets. And then she realized she had been bitten on her arms, legs, neck and face.

Alex McKindra had been bitten too, although not as badly. Their son did not have visible marks—but some people don't react to bed bug bites.

Virag said the hotel had prior complaints about bed bugs but “did not implement policies, procedures or protocols” to deal with it.

Still, most of the award was for emotional distress, not punitive damages. The key, according Virag, was that his clients—a military family who had never sued anyone before—were “completely credible.”

The experience “changed their life,” he said, and left Martha McKindra with an insect phobia, fear of traveling and sleeplessness. “She still has severe emotional distress,” he said.

While it's too soon to know if the verdict, which came on Oct. 2 after two days of deliberations, will be appealed, Virag is confident it will be upheld. “The case was very clean. I don't see any appealable issues,” he said.

In 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a $382,000 award—of which $372,000 was for punitive damages—against Motel 6 after two guests were bitten by bed bugs. In that case, the plaintiffs stressed that the motel had a repeated complaints about bed bugs but failed to take action.

Judge Richard Posner for the panel wrote that the infestation reached “farcical proportions,” and that the motel's “failure to warn guests or to take effective measures to eliminate the bed bugs amounted to fraud and probably to battery as well.”

“The defendants' behavior was outrageous but the compensable harm done was slight and at the same time hard to quantify because a large element of it was emotional,” Posner added.

The jury in San Bernardino may have put an exorbitant price tag on emotional harm, but they also sent a message to hotel operators: bed bugs are not OK. And that's good for everyone who travels. Because unless I'm getting a six-figure check, I'd like my room to be bed bug free, thank you very much.

I have my own litmus test for whether a personal injury verdict is reasonable. I think, “Would I be willing to suffer the injury in exchange for the payment?”

Almost always, my answer ranges from “No” to “Oh my god never, that poor, poor person.”

And then there's this case. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, a jury in San Bernardino County, California just awarded a family a record $546,000 for being bitten by bed bugs during a one-night stay at a Hilton Garden Inn.

No medical bills. No property damage. Just emotional distress from the bug bites plus $50,000 in punitive damages.

“It's sending shock waves through the industry,” said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian Virag, founder of My BedBug Lawyers, whose entire practice is devoted to bed bug litigation. (Yes, that's a niche. He even has competitors including Bed Bug Legal Group and Bed Bug Lawyers.)

It's certainly unpleasant to be bitten by bed bugs. Healthline says “Bed bug bites are often very itchy. You may experience a burning sensation on the skin several days after you've been bitten. You won't feel the bugs bite you because they excrete a tiny amount of anesthesia into your body before they bite. If you scratch the bite, you may cause a secondary infection that can lead to swelling and bleeding.”

So yeah, that's a bummer. And it's definitely gross to think of bugs crawling on you while you're asleep. Also, they can hitch a ride in your suitcase and infest your home, though that's not what happened here.

Still, would I personally take half a million bucks for some bites? Even a lot of bites?

You betcha.

The verdict amounts to a home run for Virag, whose success correlates directly to his willingness to take cases to trial. He said the defendants—the hotel franchise owners and their insurer Liberty Mutual, represented by James Sohn of the Law Office of George Muhar—had offered him $10,000 to settle the case before trial.

They should have known (like bed bugs) that was not going to fly.

After all, Virag racked up a $463,000 jury verdict earlier this year in a bed bug case in Los Angeles County Superior Court after declining a $2,000 settlement offer. A jury in Bakersfield, California jury also recently awarded his bug-bitten clients $104,000.

“I've been taking cases to juries, and finding that they're open and receptive to pain and suffering” awards, he said.

The most recent case was brought on behalf of an Arkansas family, Alex and Martha McKindra, and their adult son Marcus. The parents were bringing a car to Marcus, who was serving in the reserves at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The trio stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rancho Cucamonga, California on March 16, 2013.

Martha McKindra woke up at 4 am, Virag said. “She felt something on her neck. It was a bed bug feeding on her blood. She caught it and squashed it,” he said, getting blood on the sheets. And then she realized she had been bitten on her arms, legs, neck and face.

Alex McKindra had been bitten too, although not as badly. Their son did not have visible marks—but some people don't react to bed bug bites.

Virag said the hotel had prior complaints about bed bugs but “did not implement policies, procedures or protocols” to deal with it.

Still, most of the award was for emotional distress, not punitive damages. The key, according Virag, was that his clients—a military family who had never sued anyone before—were “completely credible.”

The experience “changed their life,” he said, and left Martha McKindra with an insect phobia, fear of traveling and sleeplessness. “She still has severe emotional distress,” he said.

While it's too soon to know if the verdict, which came on Oct. 2 after two days of deliberations, will be appealed, Virag is confident it will be upheld. “The case was very clean. I don't see any appealable issues,” he said.

In 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a $382,000 award—of which $372,000 was for punitive damages—against Motel 6 after two guests were bitten by bed bugs. In that case, the plaintiffs stressed that the motel had a repeated complaints about bed bugs but failed to take action.

Judge Richard Posner for the panel wrote that the infestation reached “farcical proportions,” and that the motel's “failure to warn guests or to take effective measures to eliminate the bed bugs amounted to fraud and probably to battery as well.”

“The defendants' behavior was outrageous but the compensable harm done was slight and at the same time hard to quantify because a large element of it was emotional,” Posner added.

The jury in San Bernardino may have put an exorbitant price tag on emotional harm, but they also sent a message to hotel operators: bed bugs are not OK. And that's good for everyone who travels. Because unless I'm getting a six-figure check, I'd like my room to be bed bug free, thank you very much.