When Brian Morillo died in a motor vehicle accident in Hartford in June 2013, his girlfriend was pregnant, and his daughter, Arianna, was born the following January. In the subsequent lawsuit against the allegedly negligent taxi driver who ran into Morillo's motorcycle, his loved ones claimed loss of parental consortium on behalf of Arianna. They stated that she “was deprived of ever meeting or knowing her father,” and would never know his “companionship, affection, assistance and guidance.”

However, Hartford Superior Court Judge A. Susan Peck recently granted a motion to strike any claims of loss of parental consortium, because Arianna was still in utero when her father died. “Although there is no case precisely on point in Connecticut, our Supreme Court has found in analogous cases, that a child in utero has no assertible legal rights until birth,” Peck wrote in a decision dated Dec. 31.

The accident occurred on June 3, 2013, when Morillo, 20, was operating a motorcycle southbound on Main Street in Hartford. A cab driver, Alsem Georges, had been parked facing south on Main Street when he attempted to make a U-turn and collided with Morillo's motorcycle, court documents show. Morillo died from his injuries.