“These are uncharted waters,” said Ventura Superior Court Judge Mark S. Borrell, during a quickly set hearing discussing an anonymous note alleging jury misconduct in the $2 million bed bug lawsuit against Santa Barbara landlord Dario Pini.
In 2020, two guests of Pini’s motel, The Shores Inn, were badly bitten by bed bugs and sued for their injuries and mental anguish. The jury, deciding in their favor, ordered Pini to pay one of the largest bed bug payouts in U.S. history.
One day after the verdict was delivered in May, an anonymous note surfaced in a juror’s notebook collected after the case. It stated that two jurors had driven by the Pini’s motel during the trial and alleged that the jury foreperson had a definitive bias against the property…