5-year-old scarred by hot chocolate from California ski resort: lawsuit

A premier ski resort in South Lake Tahoe is being sued after an employee’s “malicious” conduct led a five-year-old girl to suffer nasty burns from a served hot chocolate.

Brittany Burns and Joshua Moran Burns filed the lawsuit in a California superior court last year against the Heavenly Mountain Resort, accusing the getaway of negligence, according to court records, seeking damages for medical expenses and mental suffering.

A complaint reported by the San Francisco Chronicle stated the Burns brought their daughter to the resort for a day of skiing two years ago.

Instead, the daughter ended up with burns and scars all over her body, Roger Dreyer, an attorney for the family, told the Chronicle.

“She suffered bad burns down her chest and abdomen,” Dreyer said. “Now she has permanent scars.”

According to the lawsuit, the family ordered hot chocolate from a resort’s Sky Deck cafe during a ski break.

The cashier, after topping the drink with whipped cream, slid the hot chocolate across the window counter to the girl without a lid.

The daughter attempted to pick the drink up but it was “excessively and unnecessarily hot.” She ended spilling the drink into her ski suit, trapping the scalding liquid against her body.

The resort “knew and should have known that such hot beverages posed a great hazard of causing just this type of incident and injuries, including burns and/or other related injuries,” the complaint said.

The California Post reached out to Dreyer for comment. Vail Resorts Management Company told the Post it was unable to comment.

The case echoes other notable cases involving hot drinks that gained some prominence nationwide. Last year, Starbucks paid $50 million to a man whose genitals were severely burned after a hot tea spilled in his lap at a California drive-through.

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