Connecticut’s highest court has ruled that some legal rights of same-sex couples predate the state’s approvals of civil unions in 2005 and gay marriage in 2008, a decision that gay rights supporters call the first of its kind in the country.
The state Supreme Court has issued a 6-0 decision overturning two lower court rulings and allowing a widow to sue a doctor in a medical malpractice case for the death of her spouse and the loss of her spouse’s companionship and income. The alleged malpractice occurred from 2001 to 2004, a time when only married couples were allowed to sue for loss of spousal “consortium.”
