Opinion ID: 2099913
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: prenatal negligence

Text: The issue whether a cause of action exists by or on behalf of a fetus, subsequently born alive, against its mother for the unintentional infliction of prenatal injuries is an issue of first impression in this court. We begin with a review of the area of tort liability for prenatal negligence as it has developed in regards to third persons. It was not until 1884, in Dietrich v. Northampton (1884), 138 Mass. 14, that such a case came before a court in the United States alleging a cause of action for prenatal injuries. In Dietrich, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes held that the common law did not recognize a cause of action in tort for prenatal injuries to a fetus. Judge Holmes denied that such an action may lie primarily because the fetus was a part of the mother at the time of the injury, [and] any damage to it which was not too remote to be recovered for at all was recoverable by her. (138 Mass. at 17.) After Dietrich and until 1946, all courts in the United States which considered the question agreed: no action would lie for injuries sustained by a fetus which became apparent on its birth. This court was one of the first to consider the question of the liability of third persons for prenatal negligence after the Dietrich case. In Allaire v. St. Luke's Hospital (1900), 184 Ill. 359, it was held that no action would lie for injuries to a fetus, only days away from birth, due to the negligence of the defendant hospital where the mother of the plaintiff was a patient awaiting the delivery of the plaintiff. In Allaire, this court affirmed the opinion of the appellate court, which had stated, `That a child before birth is, in fact, a part of the mother and is only severed from her at birth, cannot, we think, be successfully disputed.' (184 Ill. at 368.) This court adopted the reasoning of the appellate court that the plaintiff, at the time of the injury, did not have a distinct and independent existence from his mother; the injury was to the mother and not to the plaintiff. 184 Ill. at 365.