In Emeagwali v. The Brooklyn Hospital Center (2006), 11 Misc.3d 1055A, 815 N.Y.S.2d 494, Slip Copy 2006 WL 435813, the mother delivered a 21 and one-half week old fetus. Id. There was some question as to whether the fetus was alive at the time of birth. In any event, the hospital, without consulting with the parents, delivered its remains to the hospital's Pathology Department for disposal. Id. The parents brought suit against the hospital based upon their right of sepulcher and an allegation that the hospital failed to comply with its own procedures by failing to obtain their permission for the disposal of the fetal remains. Id. The case went to trial and the parents were awarded $ 2 million. The hospital filed a motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, in which it argued that the plaintiffs failed to establish entitlement to damages under any "cognizable New York law." Id. The hospital maintained, in the alternative, that it was entitled to a new trial based upon the manifest weight of the evidence and the influence of the "irrelevant, grossly prejudicial materials offered at trial." Id. The New York trial court determined that, even if a fetus was never alive, the parent or parents have a common law right of sepulcher. Id. The court based this finding on a parent's "quasi-property right in the body because fetuses, stillborn or not, have symbolic importance vastly different from that of ordinary tissue due to the physical presence mothers feel in their body and the hopes and dreams she had for the future." Id., quoting Janicki v. Hospital of St. Raphael (1999), 46 Conn. Supp. 204, 744 A.2d 963, 968. The court further found the plaintiffs could recover for their emotional damages because: (1) a written hospital policy recognized a parent's right to religious and private burial opportunities, or, at the least, to request the remains of a stillborn fetus; (2) New York state health regulations require a hospital to deliver a fetus that has completed a gestation period of 20 weeks "to only a licensed funeral director or undertaker." Id.