NEW ORLEANS (Legal Newsline) – Actress Sofia Vergara has received a favorable ruling in Louisiana in a lawsuit brought by a former boyfriend who says he’s acting on behalf of their unborn children.
Ex-boyfriend Nick Loeb sued Vergara, of Modern Family fame, in Louisiana state court but has not found any favorable judges there. On Jan. 27, a three-judge panel of the state’s Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed most of the trial court's ruling against Loeb.
He is hoping to use a surrogate to birth two embryos the two produced when they were together. They have been frozen in a facility in California since Loeb and Vergara split in 2014.
Vergara has already filed her own lawsuit in California to enforce an agreement the two reached, but Loeb filed his own in Louisiana that says she has violated her “high duty of care and prudent administration” owed to the two embryos, whom he has named Emma and Isabella.
His lawsuit says, by refusing to allow them to be born, she has violated their right to be free from slavery and right to equal protection under the 13th and 14th amendments.
“(E)specially in light of the legislature’s silence with regard to treating embryos, that are not implanted into a woman’s womb, like children in the Human Embryo statutes, we find that the (Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act) does not apply to embryos or unborn children,” Judge Regina Bartholomew-Woods wrote in ruling against Loeb’s claims made under that law.
“As such, the UCCJEA is inapplicable in the instant matter and the trial court did not commit legal error in sustaining the exception of lack of subject matter jurisdiction and ultimately dismissing the current action.”
The court also found that it did not have personal jurisdiction, calling the connection to Loeb’s claims and Louisiana “weak.” The sperm and ova were donated in California, the embryos were created there and the contract with the company responsible for storing and preserving the embryos was executed in California.
Loeb has asserted he is a resident of the state, providing his Louisiana driver’s license as proof, but the opinion notes he has licenses in other states too.
“(W)e find that Mr. Loeb will have an adequate remedy in California to assert whatever defenses or rights he may have in that lawsuit pertaining to the embryos while the nonjoined party, (Assisted Reproductive Technologies), can be present to assert whatever rights it may have,” Bartholomew-Woods wrote.