MARTIN BY MARTIN v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp.

Plaintiffs, on behalf of their minor child, brought suit in the circuit court of Cook County against the manufacturer of the oral contraceptive which the mother ingested during her pregnancy, alleging that the manufacturer’s failure to warn the mother of the dangers of the oral contraceptive was the proximate cause of their child’s birth defects. This court has previously held, under the learned intermediary doctrine, that a pharmaceutical manufacturer’s duty to warn runs only to the prescribing physician, and not to the user of the drugs. In this cause, we consider the application of the…