Insurance Company Sues Culkin

By Stephen M. Silverman

Friday June 12, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

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Macaulay Culkin, 20, and others have been sued by Travelers Property Casualty for more than $113,000 that the insurance company paid to tenants who suffered losses in a Dec. 23, 1998 fire that began in the Culkin family's high-rise apartment building in New York, reports that city's Times and other sources. Investigators say that the fire was apparently caused by a short circuit in a wall-mounted heater in the Culkin apartment. Fire officials said that the fire and smoke spread to nearby floors in the 51-story structure because Patricia Bentrup, mother of the "Home Alone" star and his six siblings, left her door open when she fled her apartment. Culkin reportedly moved out of the building after he married the actress Rachel Miner in 1998. (They have since separated.) He is currently appearing on stage in London. The lawsuit also names his parents and the owners and managers of the apartment building, say reports. A spokesman for the Culkin family told the Associated Press that he had not seen the legal papers and had no comment.