In Murphy v. E. R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. (1985) 40 Cal.3d 672, a pharmacist had provided a prescription medication (DES) to the plaintiff's mother while she was pregnant with the plaintiff. The plaintiff sued the pharmacist alleging that DES was inherently defective and sought to hold the pharmacist strictly liable for the cancer the plaintiff developed at an early age allegedly as a result of the DES ingested by her mother. The pharmacist argued that he could not be held strictly liable because he was primarily acting as a professional service provider in providing the DES to the plaintiff's mother. The California Supreme Court first noted that pharmacists perform many functions including selling items other than medication to consumers. However, in addressing the issue of the "dominant purpose" of the transaction with the plaintiff's mother in order to determine whether the pharmacist was a service provider or a product provider, the court narrowly focused on the specific type of transaction that formed the basis for the plaintiff's action: that is, the pharmacist's provision of prescription medication to patients. The California Supreme Court did not, as the majority opinion implies, rest its resolution of the service/product distinction on a consideration of the pharmacist's "business as a whole." (Murphy at pp. 676-678.) Murphy held that the pharmacist's provision of prescription medication to patients was a "hybrid" that combined both services and sales. (Murphy at pp. 678-679.) Since the practice of pharmacy was highly regulated by statute, the California Supreme Court looked beyond the factors that would normally be considered in resolving the service/product distinction and considered the statutes regulating pharmacies. (Murphy at p. 679.) The court held that these regulatory statutes established as a matter of law that a pharmacist performed a service when the pharmacist provided prescription medication to a patient. (Murphy at pp. 679-681.) Before reaching that conclusion, however, the California Supreme Court first applied a multi-factor test that it stated would "ordinarily" resolve the service/product distinction in the absence of statutory considerations. (Murphy at p. 679.) The court identified four factors that should be considered in resolving the service/product distinction: (1) the provider's requisite qualifications to engage in the transaction; (2) the level of skill the provider utilized in the transaction; (3) the transaction's dependence on the supply of a product that the provider was in the business of supplying; and (4) any requisite relationship between the provision of the product and professional services provided by others. (Murphy at pp. 677-678.) Murphy also confirmed that the applicability of strict liability depends on whether the entity's "dominant role" in its transaction with the plaintiff "should be characterized as the performance of a service or the provision of a product." ( Murphy v. E. R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. (1985) 40 Cal.3d 672, 677, 221 Cal. Rptr. 447, 710 P.2d 247.) "The distinction is between a transaction where the primary objective is the acquisition of ownership or use of a product and one where the dominant purpose is to obtain services . . . ." (Murphy at p. 677.)