Negligent hairdressing and beauty treatments

With media personalities looking ever younger on screen, there has been extensive media coverage of which hair and beauty treatments the stars use to stave off the years. However, not all treatments are successful and some can have disastrous consequences.  What are the customer’s rights if a treatment goes wrong?

A visit to a salon should be a treat, but unfortunately treatments do not always go according to plan and can result in an array of injuries including burnt scalps, temporary or permanent hair loss or damage, together with pain, distress and embarrassment. Hot wax and chemicals, if not used correctly, can cause serious skin damage and permanent scarring, which can also affect you emotionally and damage your self-confidence.

When you have any treatment or buy products from the salon, under the Supply of Goods and Services Act, the salon has to supply services of reasonable care and skill, and any goods you buy should be of reasonable quality. If an injury has resulted from a treatment, then the treatment may have been carried out negligently.

Patch tests and strand tests are an important part of some hair treatment process and are intended to avoid serious reactions and injury, but these are not always done. A salon may have used the wrong concentration of products in the mixing of solutions, have left the products in contact with the skin for too long or failed to set the appropriate temperature when using hairdryers or straighteners – all examples of lack of care which may cause injury.

If you think that you have a claim, you should take all possible steps to preserve the evidence, take regular photographs and do not have any further treatments done until you have received legal advice. 

You may be worried that you signed a ‘disclaimer’ before undergoing a treatment which excludes the salon’s liability for injuries sustained. However, it is not possible to exclude legal liability for personal injuries and salons should have public liability insurance in place to pay compensation when things go wrong.

The Key contact at DMP for further advice and assistance on personal injury and accident claims is partner Sharon Kinder who heads our team as a member of the Law Society Personal Injury Panel and an APIL accredited Litigator

Sharon Kinder, partner                              
email: sharon.kinder@dextermontague.co.uk          
telephone:  0118 939 3999    

January 2016

The contents of this article are for the purposes of general awareness only. They do not purport to constitute legal or professional advice. The law may have changed since this article was published. Readers should not act on the basis of the information included and should take appropriate professional advice upon their own particular circumstances.