Barbers and hairdressers need to keep their clients safe. You need to know that these people have to follow laws that make sure their shops are clean and everything gets done right. These workers can be held liable for injuries because they work with sharp tools, hot equipment, and chemicals that might hurt someone if they’re not careful.
Most of the time, barbers and hairdressers get sued for not being careful enough, for slip and fall accidents, and for other types of personal injury claims. These cases give you thousands of dollars in medical bills when chemical treatments go wrong. Hair and scalp injuries usually affect how you look and how you feel about yourself for months at a time. Your professional reputation might take a hit if people can see the damage. If you slip and fall in a barbershop or salon because the floors are slippery and no one bothered to clean them up, you could be looking at very bad injuries.
What Duties Does a Beauty Salon Owe to Its Customers?
To prove that someone wasn’t careful enough then 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 though the barber or hairdresser might pick the right product or treatment, they can still be responsible for injuries that come from not using the product the way they’re supposed to.
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 the barber or hairdresser doesn’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 all can 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 of 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. So 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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. Make sure to have all your paperwork and medical records ready to go at this point. 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. In most states, you only have a limited amount of time to file these claims. If you wait too long, you might lose your chance to get any money at all. 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.
Most personal injury attorneys work on what’s called a contingency fee basis. That means you don’t have to pay them anything unless they win your case.
