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Milwaukee firm president facing domestic violence charge

By: Eric Heisig//February 26, 2014//

Milwaukee firm president facing domestic violence charge

By: Eric Heisig//February 26, 2014//

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Daniel Rottier
Daniel Rottier

The president of Habush Habush & Rottier SC is expected to enter a plea Friday for allegedly hitting his wife with a cane while he was drunk.

Daniel Rottier, 62, was arrested Feb. 7 after striking Frankie Rottier on her back after she confronted him about being drunk, according to a criminal complaint filed Feb. 13. The incident happened at a home they own in Maple Bluff. Rottier was later released from jail.

Rottier, a trial attorney who works out of the firm’s Madison office, was charged Feb. 13 with misdemeanor battery, domestic abuse and use of a dangerous weapon. Court records show, however, that he and the Dane County District Attorney’s Office have reached a plea agreement.

A hearing is set for 10:15 a.m. Friday in front of Dane County Circuit Judge William Hanrahan.

Daniel Rottier is represented by Madison attorney Stephen Meyer. Neither he nor his client immediately returned messages left Wednesday afternoon.

According to the complaint, Frankie Rottier had a “red welt on her upper left back from her shoulder blade to her spine.”

She told police that her husband was supposed to take their children to the movies “but came home and had been drinking.”

After confronting Daniel about not going to the movies with their children, Frankie said Daniel “pulled [his cane] back to strike her, so she turned away, causing the strike to land on her back,” the complaint states.

Frankie refused medical treatment from paramedics at the scene.

A breath test Daniel took at the Dane County Jail later revealed that he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13, according to the complaint.

Court records show that Rottier’s signature bond states that Daniel cannot speak with his wife, except for on the phone to discuss their children or their finances.

Daniel Rottier has practiced law in Wisconsin for more than 36 years. A well-known face in the courtroom, as well as in the Capitol, he has served on the State Bar’s Board of Governors and is a past-president of the Wisconsin Association for Justice. He was one of the Wisconsin Law Journal’s 2009 Leaders in the Law.

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