Sofia Vergara has won a bid against her ex to stop him using her frozen embryos.
Sofia Vergara
The 'Modern Family' star has been embroiled in a long term court battle with her ex-partner Nick Loeb after she refused to have the two embryos they had frozen together brought to term.
And now Nick has had another case thrown out of court after Judge Kevin D. Conner refused his bid under Louisiana law. Nick took his case to the Louisiana court as embryos are considered "biological human beings" under the state law. However, Nick's case has now been refused "with prejudice", which means he can't refile his case, according to the New York Post's Page Six column.
Loeb's lawyers said: "We will be appealing the court's decision. The embryos are human beings with every right to their lives and every right to be born."
Meanwhile, Nick had previously compared their embryo battle to the fight end "slavery".
He claimed the debate over the cells being product or people has happened "only one other time in United States history from which any legal precedent may be reviewed - the pre-Civil War era."
According to the documents, Nick then went on to give the full legal definition of slavery and added: "Under these simple definitions, a human embryo, if believed to be a human being and alive, (which is our contention) would be considered a slave and the parents would be the owners of the slave, particularly in states where they are considered property ...
"There was a question at the time as to whether New York had the jurisdiction to reach into Louisiana and retrieve Northup. But the New York governor discussed it with Louisiana officials and they were allowed to retrieve him. There are also dozens of cases (called the Freedom Suits), where slaves themselves or their family members applied for freedom in slave states and won. The reference to slave cases is to demonstrate the jurisdictional and legal issues arising from this stark difference in how human beings are categorised. In modern day, frozen human embryo disputes and the question of how they are categorised (human being or property) has become more frequent. Since there is little or no legislation in most states on this issue, state courts are left to decide if embryos are human beings or property or something in between and what to do in cases of dispute."
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