Donald Sterling Sued Over Bedbugs

LOS ANGELES (CN) - Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling faces a new lawsuit, over an alleged bedbug infestation at one of the apartments he owns.

Darryl Williams sued Sterling on Tuesday in Superior Court under fair housing and civil rights laws, claiming Sterling refused to exterminate a bedbug infestation in his apartment, then used the bugs as an excuse to threaten him with eviction.

Williams says that was just a pretext to get rid of him because he is black.

Williams says he lives in an apartment at the Reno Country Club apartments, which Sterling owns through his company Beverly Hills Properties.

According to the lawsuit, Sterling hired exterminators to get rid of bedbugs in apartments on both sides of Williams' place, but "purposely ignored" his residence.

Williams says that he filmed the exterminators refusing his request to work on his apartment. He claims that Sterling pretended that he had refused the exterminators access, and then threatened to kick him out.

"Plaintiff was forced to endure the harmful effects of such an infestation, including witnessing his family suffer from the infestation," Williams says, adding that Sterling filed an unlawful detainer against him.

Williams sued Sterling, the Sterling Family Trust, and the Reno Country Club.

He seeks punitive damages for violations of Fair Housing Act, the Civil Rights Act, California Fair Employment and Housing Act, and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.

He is represented by Arash Yasrebi of San Francisco.

Sterling was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million this year after recordings of his telephone conversations became public. In the recordings, he asked his then-girlfriend not to appear with black men at Clippers games.

Sterling was sued a decade ago by the Housing Rights Center of Los Angeles, then by the federal government, both of them accusing him of racial discrimination in renting his apartments. He paid millions of dollars in fines.

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