When a raucous home celebration in Sunnyvale’s quiet Raynor Park neighborhood led to the deadly capturing of an 18-year-old, questions arose about why Airbnb had allowed the residence to be rented out in violation of quite a few metropolis guidelines.
Now the net vacation-rental large must reply to a lawsuit filed by the household of Elias Elhania, the teenager killed at that celebration that drew as many as 200 younger attendees on Aug. 7, 2021.
“Airbnb has a authorized obligation to comply with the legislation,” Teresa Li, the household’s lawyer, mentioned in a press release. “The straightforward reality is that had Airbnb finished so, Elias’ life would have been spared.”
It’s the most recent fallout from the tragic incident that led to Elhania’s demise and left one other man with accidents when pictures had been fired on the property after police arrived to reply to a noise grievance. The person suspected within the capturing was arrested in late 2021 and booked into county juvenile corridor, having been 17 years previous on the time.
Along with Airbnb, the household has named as a defendant property proprietor Ke Zhou, who had listed the single-story residence as a short-term rental on Airbnb after she bought it in 2018.
Zhou by no means registered the tackle as a short-term rental with town of Sunnyvale, which requires that house owners stay on web site when their property is rented. Sunnyvale additionally limits bookings of short-term leases to simply 4 friends at a given time. As an alternative, lots of of partygoers between the age of 16 and 19 stuffed the weekend celebration, which was promoted on Instagram as a “flip up.”
Airbnb, which exploded in progress throughout the tech period by letting vacationgoers hire houses, by no means adopted up to verify Zhou’s property was in compliance with town’s guidelines, in response to the household’s lawsuit.
“All of this might have been prevented if Airbnb took unlawful listings extra severely,” Li mentioned within the assertion. “And Airbnb, together with the positioning host, needs to be held accountable for this mindless and tragic lack of life.”
The swimsuit seeks damages from Zhou and Airbnb plus injunctive reduction in opposition to the corporate’s present enforcement requirements for leases listed on the platform illegally.
Within the wake of the deadly capturing, Airbnb mentioned it deliberate to sue the visitor who threw the celebration for damages, alleging the property was rented from Zhou below false pretenses. However no document of such a lawsuit is on the market in courtroom information, suggesting the corporate by no means ended up submitting one, Li mentioned in an interview.
Zhou, in the meantime, was sued by Sunnyvale and the state of California; the swimsuit claimed it was “extraordinarily unlikely a large, marketed home celebration would have occurred on the topic property had the ‘host’ really been there.”
Elhania, the son of immigrants from Morocco, was raised in Santa Clara, the place he learn at a university stage by the ninth grade and wished to in the future open a nonprofit that improved entry to literature overseas, the household mentioned.
Particulars of how the teenager, who had been invited to the home celebration by mates, ended up the sufferer of a deadly capturing have by no means come to gentle. His household, devastated by the shock, rapidly relocated to Texas however plans to maneuver again to California someday this yr, a consultant mentioned.
“There is no such thing as a ache on the earth better than dad and mom having to bury their very own son,” the household mentioned in a press release. “To this date, his sisters nonetheless can't sleep at night time; his grandparents don't settle for his demise, nonetheless believing that he's alive.”
The tragedy echoed components of a mass capturing two years earlier than in Orinda, one which left 5 lifeless at a Halloween celebration inside a mansion listed on Airbnb.
Much like the capturing in Sunnyvale, the Orinda bloodbath despatched shockwaves by way of the prosperous suburb, main Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky to tweet that the corporate would ban the renting of celebration homes to be able to “eliminate abusive host and visitor conduct.”
Airbnb officers couldn't be reached for touch upon the Elhania household’s lawsuit, first filed at Superior Court docket in San Francisco, town the place the $75 billion firm is headquartered. The case has since been moved to federal courtroom upon Airbnb’s request, the household’s lawyer mentioned Friday.
Workers author Ethan Baron contributed to this report.