I can see it now:
Mary is a Superhost. Wifi speed is Very Fast at 427 mbs. The listing has been sniffered by dogs.
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“The host has personally licked all surfaces and can guarantee that there is no drug residue anywhere in the unit”.
Kinda like politicians drinking a glass of tap water to prove to residents that the toxic chemical spill next to their house is nothing to worry about.
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Thank you for your research here.
[I was going to respond with faux criticism that it would be nice if just once in a while you would come up with facts and not just shoot from the hips something that ‘someone’ told you years ago. But not funny enough.]
It is interesting that the theory that the plaintiffs are using in the case is that the employer is generally liable for the acts/omissions of employees but ALSO independent contractors under one (or more) of three theories: 1) the principal (Airbnb) failed to properly vet, supervise the independent contractor, 2) the activity is non-delegable and a duty is owed to the public or 3) the work is inherently dangerous.
This really is a shocking case.
A nineteen month old child checks into an Airbnb that had been/is a party house. The little girl never leaves the premises and the next day takes a nap and is found dead of fentanyl.
Less than one month earlier the police were called to this Airbnb for a party, where the guest count of seven was exceeded. Just a week or so before there was a weekend reservation for six adults but there were 12 people there (this guest is alleged to have brought drugs to the property). [This is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath home.]
It will be very interesting to see if Airbnb is held liable though I suspect that Airbnb would be heavily incentivized to settle and not let a trial court come out with a ruling that Airbnb is liable for the actions/omissions of its Host.
I am supposing that this area of the law – vicarious liability – will emerge more and more of an issue as companies hire ‘gig’ workers and thereby skirt not just taxes and employee work conditions but also many traditional remedies that have evolved over the years to protect the public and consumer.
I just today read here in the forum of some properties that do advertise parties and events despite Airbnb’s ‘no party or event’ rule. Reading this complaint reminds the Host that if a guest uses certain drugs the results could be fatal to the next guest.
One takeaway is for sure to uphold the ‘no party’ rule (that means cameras, maybe more) for Airbnb reservations. [If you choose to permit parties, say on VRBO, you probably need some kind of writing on what is permitted/prohibited.]. Another takeaway is to have a very thorough cleaning if the Host has any reason to believe drugs might have been used on the property. Perhaps a third (but seems toothless) thing to do is to make sure you have a rule against all illegal activity, including drug use.
Imagine you were a juror in this case. A 19-month old is dead. The Airbnb property had apparently been a party house. Police were called there just in the prior month. Guests are making weekend reservations for 7+, a dozen people for a weekend stay in a 4 bedroom home.
Of course, the jurors will hear all the details. Wouldn’t you as the juror want someone ‘to pay’ for this? Should it be just the Hosts? Shouldn’t “deep pockets’ be tapped? It’s a civil case. No one is going to jail (so far). The standard of proof is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ but 'more likely than not.” What do you think you might do as a juror?
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There doesn’t have to be a party for guests to be using drugs in the house. You could just as easily have a single guest who was using. Fentanyl and crack aren’t just party drugs, in fact, they most often are not, I would hazard a guess.
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I agree.
But here the facts look like the plaintiffs will show that there was a party, maybe two in just the last month, and that drugs were used at at least one of those parties. So that’s a bad look on the Host defendants.
But you’re right, of course. It could be someone splitting a pill that they lose. So, as Hosts, we need to think about the ‘innocent’ situations where harm could arise.
This case does underscore the importance, maybe the life and death importance of cleanliness.
The case also underscores how ‘all’ will come out if there’s an accident.
Right or wrong, the question is how a juror will interpret actions/omissions in some things (e.g., in allowing parties, occupancy exceeding booked or maximum) to come to conclusion in other things.
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I still don’t see how the cops can dismiss the parents as having had the drug with them just because their belongings were searched. I don’t care if they’re doctors or lawyers- plenty of supposedly upstanding citizens have a hard drug habit. In fact, one just got sentenced to life in prison.
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I’m sure lawyers will make this strong argument in court, @muddy .
I just read the complaint, thanks so much @JJD , the complaint disturbs for multiple reasons.
Apart from the horror of this poor child’s death, all the info about drug use in AirBnBs is sobering indeed. I’ll be better in the morning but right now I feel like throwing in the towel.
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Wow @Rolf this poor family lost their child in tragic circumstances and you talk about ‘misleading clickbait’.
The most likely place for the child to pick up the drug was in the holiday home her family booked. The guest who held a party at the property previously admitted their was cocaine use at the party so likely there would have been other drugs too.
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Well, you got me to read p 6-7. LOL. The first thing that occurs to me is that is all hearsay evidence and inadmissable in court. And if it’s admissable, I can be a witness to the truth that hosts will both lie and be mistaken. A host posted that he found a cocaine spoon on the property? But no cocaine? A bong? Weed is legal in many places. Needles? Would these folks know if the guest were diabetic?
I know the goal is a settlement and a child is dead for some reason, but p 6-7 made me laugh.
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There are a lot of exceptions to the hearsay rule, particularly for civil cases. They have listed the titles and quotes from the CC to demonstrate that Airbnb had actual or constructive knowledge. As hosts would be considered agents or servants of Airbnb, this would likely go under the business records exception to hearsay. If the posts are incorrect or entirely false, they would still assist in establishing that Airbnb had “knowledge”.
It made me laugh too but maybe for different reasons. I’d say it’s a good reminder for everyone that things that you post on the CC might end up in court filing.
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I don’t understand what happened to the CC site. It really is not clear how to use it and most of the long term hosts, as far as I can tell, have disappeared.
Since they totally changed the format, aka “improved” it, I notice there is very little participation compared to before.
Also several long-time contributors have gotten banned from the CC, including me.
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you got a whole post devoted to your passing (for want of a better term, lol). Andrew and Ute too, sparked a lot of conversation. When another host brought up my situation they actually deleted her comments!! 
I also made a post the morning of my dramas, and they deleted that too.
And I had a stalk recently and it looks like many of my posts have been deleted. I swear they’d done that to Andrew too, cos in older threads you don’t see him as much as you should. What a waste of resources… And they claim to appreciate the criticism but really they are just itching to remove people, and the few long term posters left I think are very, very careful. And if they knew that you could be banned from hosting too, over some words in the forums, they’d be wise to stop posting in the forums completely.
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Muddy, what was the reason they banned you?
Oh, they have this overarching political correctness where they see discrimination under every pebble. I had gotten a few warnings, over stuff like mentioning that a certain demographic tends to… whatever. Things we tend to discuss here easily. I think one was something about how millennials tend to send one one-liner message after another, as if they were texting with their friends. I always am aware not to paint everyone in any demographic with the same brush, because of course people are individuals, and don’t all behave the same. But I think it helps lead to understanding of other demographics if you aren’t afraid to acknowledge that there are cultural differences and try to understand why they do certain things, because if you do, you are more likely to have more tolerance for behaviors that otherwise might irritate you.
In any case, the last warning was when I said something tongue-in-cheek in a thread where I think a host was complaining about her guests responding to her messages asking her this or that, without answering her questions, as if they had never read them. I wrote something to the effect that it sounded just like how the Filipino CS reps dealt with hosts. That was supposedly some discrimination against Filipinos, even though it’s a fact that their CS operates, for the most part, out of the Phillipines. Had it operated out of France, or the US, I would have said the French reps, or the American reps.
But I didn’t get banned right away after that, I think it was when I called out Catherine Powell for her tone-deaf feel-good responses, asking if they were being written by the CS reps, because that’s what they sounded like.
As well as things posted here. Also in the media.
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Ah! That’s actually helpful. I have an upcoming VRBO guest that’s doing that and it drives me crazy. Three notifications (app, text, email) per one-liner, so I get 12-15 notifications in less than a minute from her.
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Exactly my thoughts, whoever travels with a small child or a pet should check all hidden places, upon arrival. With same day turnovers, something as small as a pill can easily be overlooked under the furniture or between sofa pillows
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Yes, they use the send button like a period 
I asked one of my guests why her generation does that- why they don’t just write all in one msg. The answer was enlightening. She said her texting generation views messaging as a form of speech rather than a form of writing. I say something, you say something- they keyboard so fast that they can exchange messages in instants, whereas I’m just starting to respond when 7 more msg pings happen.
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