Buchers Sue West Bend Hotel

Wendy and I were there when this happened.

Claiming their daughter severely burned her hands on a lobby fireplace, former Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher and his wife, Jessica McBride, have filed a lawsuit against a West Bend hotel and its insurance company.

   McBride is a frequent columnist for the Daily News.

   The couple is seeking unspecified monetary damages in the suit filed against the Clairemont Inn and West Bend Mutual Insurance Co.

   McBride was giving a campaign speech to a group at the hotel on Feb. 26, 2006 when the incident occurred, according to the suit filed in Washington County Circuit Court. Bucher was running as a Republican candidate for state attorney general.

   Former Bucher associate Jennifer Dorow was watching the 10-month-old toddler, when the toddler put her hands on the glass front of a fireplace.

   Dorow was later added to the lawsuit by Clairemont’s insurer as a third defendant. Both Bucher and McBride said they did not blame Dorow, and said she should not have been included in the lawsuit.

   “It happened in the wink of an eye,” Bucher said.

   The lawsuit maintains that the Clairemont Inn ownership was negligent in “failing to install and maintain a protective device in proximity to the front of (the) fireplace to prevent individuals from coming in contact with the dangerously heated pane of glass over the opening of the active burning gas fire; and in failing to construct, repair or maintain said defendant’s premises as safe as the nature of said defendant’s business would reasonably permit.”

It really stinks that their child burned her hands, but I don’t think the hotel is to blame.  It’s a fireplace.  There isn’t any way to keep it from being hot other than turning it off.  This was a tragic accident.  Nothing more.