What Should You Do Right After a Salon Injury?
If you get hurt at a barbershop or salon, take these steps right away:
- Tell the barber or salon manager what happened before you leave
- Take photos of your injury and the area where it happened
- Get medical treatment as soon as you can, even if the injury seems minor
- Save all receipts and medical records
- Write down what happened while it’s still fresh in your mind
- Talk to a personal injury attorney about whether you have a claim
Gathering Evidence and Documents: Strong evidence makes a big difference in these cases. Beyond photos and medical records, you should also try to keep the salon’s intake forms, any signed waivers or agreements, product labels or receipts from chemicals used, and contact information for anyone who saw what happened.
If the salon has security cameras, your attorney may be able to get that footage before it gets erased.
What Duties Does a Beauty Salon Owe to Its Customers?
To prove that someone wasn’t careful enough, you’ll need to show that the service provider didn’t meet their duty of care and this directly caused your injuries. Barbers and hairdressers have the same responsibility as all other people in their line of work. They need to have the same knowledge, skills, and level of care that other people in their profession have.
First, the barber or hairdresser needs to run tests to see how a product will affect each client, so they can catch any bad reactions before they happen. Your skin chemistry is different from every other client’s. If they don’t run these tests, they might not be meeting their standard of care.
Second, the barber or hairdresser needs to do the treatment or service correctly. When they don’t do this right, issues might show up in a few ways.
Failure to select the appropriate treatment
Not picking the right treatment happens when they don’t have or don’t use the knowledge they need to choose the right product. If they don’t pick the right product, it could be because they didn’t do a safety test. But it can also be its own separate problem. Not following the directions is another issue.
Failure to use as directed
A barber or hairdresser might fail to meet the standard of care if they ignore the manufacturer’s instructions for safe use. The timing of chemicals matters more than most people think. If a hairdresser leaves a chemical relaxer in your hair for longer than the instructions say, you might lose your hair and get chemical burns on your scalp.
Failure to carefully and diligently perform the treatment
Even if a barber or hairdresser picks the right treatment and follows the manufacturer’s instructions, they can still be responsible for injuries if they’re sloppy or careless when they do the work. If they don’t clean and sterilize their equipment, they could be held responsible for any injuries or infections that happen because of it.
Legal Defenses That Barbers and Hairdressers Can Use
When a barber or hairdresser gets sued for personal injury, they have a few ways to defend themselves. It can all depend on the facts of what happened.
One common situation is with beauty schools that give out free or cheap services. In return, students ask clients to sign papers that say the school isn’t responsible if something goes wrong. You’ll see these waivers all the time in training schools. Before the client gets any service done, they have to sign a contract that says the school can’t be held responsible for problems. The contract also makes it clear that students who haven’t finished their training yet will be doing the work.
There’s another defense that barbers and hairdressers can use. If the client helped cause their own injury by not following directions, or if they knew something was risky but went ahead anyway, that can work in the service provider’s favor. Let’s say the barber or hairdresser tells the client to stay still while they’re working. If the client moves around anyway and gets hurt, that’s on them.
Here’s another example. Say the client walks out of the salon while they still have chemicals in their hair. If something bad happens, the court might decide that the client made their own injury worse by leaving too soon. Lawyers sometimes call this contributory negligence. When this happens, the court might lower the amount of money the client can get.
The timing of when incidents happen can matter in these cases. Let’s say the client walks out of the shop or salon and then realizes they have a burn or some other injury. If they wait too long to tell their service provider or go to the doctor and then they get an infection, that delay could hurt their case.
If the client already had health problems before they came in, that’s another defense the barber or hairdresser might use. The legal system has a name for this – superseding cause. What that means is that the barber or hairdresser didn’t actually cause the injury. Something or someone else did.
If a client happens to fall in the barbershop or salon and then falls again when they get home, the business could say that something else caused the real injury. Some people call this an “Act of God” defense. If this defense works, the court might throw out the whole case against the business owner.
To use any of these defenses, you need to keep records and have a lawyer. The courts look at each case differently based on what actually happened and what proof people bring to court.
What Could Hurt Your Chance of Suing a Barber or Salon?
Not every bad haircut or minor irritation gives you a legal claim. To have a case, you generally need to show that the barber or hairdresser did something wrong and that it directly caused a real injury. If you signed a liability waiver, knew about a risk and went ahead anyway, or if your own actions caused the problem, your case could be weakened or thrown out.
How Can You Protect Your Salon Business?
The best way for barbers and hairdressers to protect themselves is to make sure they follow best practices. Each state has its own regulatory board or commission that puts out up-to-date laws, requirements and sanitary standards for all barbershops and salons. These requirements can be very different from one state to another.
State Variations: For example, some states require barbers and cosmetologists to complete different amounts of training hours before they can get licensed. Health and safety inspection rules also vary. Some states follow pure contributory negligence rules, which can completely block an injured client from getting any money if they were even partly at fault.
Other states use comparative negligence, which reduces the award based on how much fault the client shares. These differences can change how a case plays out depending on where you live.
If you run your business according to these laws and standards, you’re taking care of your clients and you’ll be less likely to run into legal problems.
Another way for barbers and hairdressers to protect themselves is to buy liability insurance that covers any money you might have to pay out if someone sues you for personal injury. Just one lawsuit can destroy your business and your reputation. When clients sue you for injuries or infections, you could lose everything. Without enough protection, your business funds and your personal savings are in danger.
Risks and Penalties Associated with a Violation: A barber or salon owner found liable for negligence could face higher insurance rates, loss of their professional license, fines from the state licensing board, and lasting damage to their reputation that drives away clients. In serious cases involving health code violations, the state could shut down the business entirely.
Professional liability insurance can help cover the costs if someone sues you for something you or your employees did or didn’t do. This insurance can pay for settlements, court costs and lawyer fees. General liability insurance can cover the money you’d have to pay if someone gets hurt or their property gets damaged at your business. Workers compensation insurance helps pay for medical bills and lost wages if any of your employees get hurt while they’re working.
You might also want to get business personal property insurance which pays to replace your equipment and furniture if something happens to them. This includes your chairs, computers, sinks and all your other equipment. If all your equipment is working the way it should, you’re much less likely to have someone claim you were careless.
If you run your business from home, you need to know that your normal homeowner’s insurance probably won’t cover you if a client gets hurt. You might be able to add this coverage to your homeowner’s policy, or you might need to buy a completely separate policy. Whatever you choose will affect how much you pay each month and how well you’re protected.
Most salon owners only find out they don’t have the right coverage after something bad has already happened. A qualified lawyer can help determine what kind of insurance you need.
What Are Your Options for Salon Injury Damages?
The most common types of damages that courts can award are what are called compensatory damages. These damages are meant to pay back the person who got hurt for every loss and injury they went through. The amount you get can depend on how bad your injuries were. When courts work out these amounts, they follow laws that have been around for a while. What also matters is if you have enough proof to show that your injury happened because of what the defendant did or didn’t do. Compensatory damages usually cover your medical bills, the income you lost, and your pain and suffering.
Pain and suffering damages are the money you get for the physical and emotional pain that comes from an injury, illness, or loss. Even lawyers who have been practicing for years find it hard to put a dollar amount on emotional harm.
When courts give out pain and suffering awards, they’re trying to make up for losses that you can’t just show with receipts. If you’ve been having sleepless nights and endless worry, the law says you should get something for that. Juries have the hard job of turning your emotional trauma into a dollar amount. What the law does is give you money for losses that can’t be replaced.
People sometimes call these non-economic damages because they’re not the losses you can measure or prove with numbers. Some common reasons people get pain and suffering awards include emotional trauma like PTSD, not being able to do the activities you used to love, and maybe not living as long as you would have.
Most states give you between one and three years to file a personal injury lawsuit, but the exact deadline depends on where you live and the type of claim you’re filing. If you miss this deadline, called a statute of limitations, you lose your right to sue. Talk to an attorney as soon as possible so you don’t run out of time.
How Much Does It Cost to Sue a Barber or Salon?
Many personal injury attorneys work on contingency, which means you don’t pay them unless you win. Other costs can include court filing fees, fees for medical experts, and expenses for collecting records and evidence. These costs vary depending on where you live and how involved the case gets. Your attorney can explain what costs to expect before you move forward.
Trying to handle a salon injury claim without a lawyer can be risky. Insurance companies have teams of adjusters and attorneys working to pay you as little as possible. Without legal experience, you might accept a lowball settlement, miss filing deadlines, or fail to gather the right evidence.
An attorney levels the playing field and helps make sure you don’t leave money on the table.
Do I Need an Attorney for Help with Barber or Hairdresser Issues?
If you’ve been hurt by a barber or hairdresser, or if you were injured while you were in a barbershop or salon, you might want to talk to an experienced personal injury attorney. LegalMatch can put you in touch with the right attorney for your specific needs.
When you get hurt at a salon, it could be anything from chemical burns to slip-and-fall accidents. Your medical bills will start piling up fast while you’re trying to manage the pain and the time you have to miss from work. The shop’s insurance company will probably call you pretty soon with a settlement that sounds fair when you first hear it.
A personal injury attorney who knows what they’re doing can tell you if you can file a claim against the shop or the person who was working on you. They’ll also help you choose which claim you should file, if it’s personal injury, premises liability, or negligence. Plus, they can go to court for you if that’s what it takes. They’ll help you get the right amount of money for what happened to you.
Most professional salons have liability insurance for these kinds of accidents. Your attorney will check if the shop followed the safety laws they were supposed to follow when they were working on you. They’ll also look at the shop’s training records and check if there have been any other accidents there before that might strengthen your case.
Your attorney will also make sure you file before any deadlines pass. The medical records from your treatment will show how bad your injuries were and what treatment you needed.
When it comes time to work out a settlement, there’s usually plenty of back-and-forth between your attorney and the insurance company. Your attorney takes care of these negotiations so you can just get better. They know how these insurance companies work and what a fair settlement actually looks like. The whole process usually takes a few months before everything gets wrapped up. Your attorney will keep you updated about everything in your case.
