Fox News Worker Files Bedbugs Lawsuit

May 30, 2008 — -- A Fox News employee suffering from "post-traumatic stress syndrome" has filed a lawsuit against the owners of the network's building for failing to adequately rid the premises of the source of her mental anguish -- bedbugs.

Jane Clark, a 12-year veteran of the cable news network, says she was bitten three times in Fox's newsroom over the course of seven months, resulting in a fear of the insects and of her workplace.

She says she routinely wakes up to nightmares about bedbugs, leading her to sleep with a flashlight and franticly search her sheets for the pests when she wakes up horrified in the middle of the night.

"I'm terrified of bringing [the bugs] home to my family. I see things crawling on the walls that aren't really there," she said.

She has not been to work since soon after the last time she claims to have been bitten by bugs April 30.

Clark has filed suit against Beacon Capital Partners and Cushman & Wakefield, the companies that respectively own and manage the Manhattan address where Fox News is headquartered.

She has not, however, filed suit against Fox News or its parent company, News Corp.

Clark was first bitten in October 2007 and again in November, prompting the network to call in bug-sniffing dogs and exterminators, and ultimately move the personnel in her department from the newsroom to another floor.

She said the infestation was so bad at the end of last year that she was "catching bugs on a piece of tape as they walked across my desk" and that she would every day examine her chair, which she kept covered in a plastic bag.

When returning home from work, she said, she would remove her clothes outside her door and seal them in a plastic bag to protect her husband and baby from being bitten. The bugs, she said, never infested her Manhattan apartment.

Clark's lawyer, Alan Schnurman, described her condition as an "acute psychological injury."

The outbreak originated at Fox News with an employee who sat at Clark's desk on the weekend. Warren Vandeveer, senior vice president for operations and engineering at Fox News, told The New York Times in March that when an exterminator visited the home of the employee, he characterized it as "the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business."

Bedbugs are small, wingless blood-sucking insects that respond to body heat. Their bites result in painful, itchy welts.