No Parental Claim for Loss of Child’s Consortium in CT

The defendants in this action sought to dismiss the loss of consortium claims asserted by the plaintiffs for the injuries sustained by the plaintiff’s minor child. On June 23, 2020, the plaintiff strapped her infant daughter into her car seat and placed the car seat on the kitchen counter next to an electric range stove. While the plaintiff was away from the kitchen, the car seat caught fire as a result of a faulty design or production of both the car seat and the stove. The minor was removed from the burning car seat but suffered severe burns and injuries to her entire body.

Supreme Court Declines to Recognize Parent’s Claim for Loss of Child’s Consortium

Among the other claims alleged, the mother and father of the minor asserted a claim for loss of the minor’s consortium, on the grounds that, due to the minor’s injuries, they lost the consortium, society, care and companionship of their daughter, and will continue to suffer such loss in the future. Neither the Connecticut Supreme Court nor the Appellate Court has recognized a cause of action for loss of filial consortium. In arguing that this court should recognize such a claim, the plaintiffs focus on the importance of the parent-child relationship and the seriousness of an injury to that bond.

Distinguishing Filial Consortium from Spousal Consortium

However, the court states that parents are not dependent on their child, certainly not an infant child, for their financial support, household assistance, or emotional solace. Moreover, the parent-child relationship is not reciprocal like husband and wife. Although the emotional pain that a parent experiences when their child sustains severe and potentially disabling injury is devastating, the suffering for which the plaintiffs in this case seek compensation is a form of emotional distress, rather than the type of relational loss or loss of society for which the tort of loss of consortium affords a remedy. Those two types of remedies are separate and distinct. The court finds more persuasive the line of cases from other jurisdictions that recognize a clear conceptual and practical distinction between parental consortium and filial consortium that militates against recognizing a common-law cause of action for loss of the latter. Therefore, the court answers the certified question of whether a parent can assert a claim for the loss of consortium of an injured minor child in the negative. L.L. Et Al v. Newell Brands, Inc. Et Al, 351 Conn. 262 (2025)