An attorney from Dallas is fighting the good fight for women everywhere by suing celebrity hair stylist Chaz Dean in federal court for hair loss that a handful of plaintiffs say was caused by his line of luxury shampoos and conditioners.
It all started when Cindy Peterson, a former customer of Wen—Dean’s hair product line—started noticing clumps of her self-described thick hair were missing from her scalp. Even though she no longer uses the products, Peterson told WFAA in Dallas that she eventually lost about a third of her hair and some of it still hasn’t grown back.
Dallas-based lawyer Amy Davis is representing Peterson and several other plaintiffs who have similar hair loss complaints. (It seems notable that the suit is originating in Dallas, a city where hair thickness and volume is akin to virtue and moral integrity.) Davis is suing Dean and Gunty-Renker, the marketing company for Dean’s products, for negligence on behalf of about a half-dozen women who claim that using Wen products caused their hair to fall out. But WFAA reports that in the past two weeks, since the lawsuit was filed, more than fifty other women with stories of Wen-related hair loss have stepped forward.
According to Davis, the hair loss was so dramatic it rendered some of these women home-bound and unfit to fulfill their social obligations.
This isn’t the first time Dean and Gunty-Renker have been sued on charges related to hair loss. In November 2014 another class action lawsuit was filed after a Florida woman said she lost a third of her hair from using Wen hair conditioner. Customer reviews on ConsumerAffairs.com of Dean’s “revolutionary hair care” line also reveal other tales of hair loss caused by products that didn’t add nearly as much volume as advertised.
“After spending a significant amount of money on hair loss products, I realize that the cause of my hair loss was the one product I was using,” writes one troubled customer. “I stopped using WEN—within three days my hair loss decreased by at least 85 percent.”
According to Dean’s website—which boasts pictures of models like Brooke Shields, smiling coyly beneath a cascading waterfall of full, shiny hair—the thing that makes his Wen products special is that they’re made “without the harsh chemicals in some ordinary shampoos.” The validity of this claim will soon be tested. Attorney Davis has hired a team of chemists to investigate what, exactly, is in Dean’s special hair product elixir.
The higher the hair, the closer to heaven, the saying goes, and it seems as if it would be an outright sin to deny these women a chance to achieve those heights.
(Photo courtesy of ThinkStock.)
