A recently filed lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that a range of widely used professional hair dye products contributed to the development of bladder cancer in a California-based cosmetologist after decades of occupational exposure.
The plaintiff, Hector Corvera, is suing more than a dozen cosmetic and personal care companies—including L’Oréal USA, Wella Professionals, Clairol, and Henkel—on six causes of action, including strict liability for failure to warn and design defects, deceit by concealment, and violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law.
The suit’s allegations
According to the complaint, Corvera “worked in a salon as a professional hair dresser/cosmetologist working with and/or around said PRODUCTS through his normal day to day duties as a professional hair dresser/cosmetologist,” where he ”worked coloring hair at least two to three times a day for five days a week that exposed him to said PRODUCTS on a daily basis from approximately 1981 through June of 2023.”
Corvera’s duties included “mixing, applying, cleaning, inhaling, and removing hair color PRODUCTS and any residue…on a daily basis” for over 40 years, the complaint continued, culminating in a bladder cancer diagnosis in 2023.
Under the Factual Allegations listed in the complaint, the plaintiffs cited that “in 2010, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) completed its comprehensive review and found that based on excessive risk of bladder cancer from occupational exposure to hair dyes the hairdressing occupation was listed as a Group 2A’ probably carcinogenic to humans.’”
Further, the complaint explained, “IARC classified 4-Aminobiphenyl and Ortho-Toluidine as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1),” and “IARC stated that both 4-ABP and O-T have been found in hair dyes.”
The lawsuit claims that the manufacturers failed to disclose that their hair dye products contained hazardous chemicals like these, which were present in hair dyes, even after industry assurances that such carcinogens had been removed decades earlier.
“Carcinogenic aromatic amines supposedly removed by manufacturers at this time were 4-aminobiphenyl, o-toluidine, benzidine, and 2-naphthylamine, among many others,” plaintiffs wrote. However, the complaint explained that “studies conducted since the 1970s conclusively prove that manufactures failed to remove carcinogenic aromatic amines from its hair dye products.”
The Factual Allegations of the complaint then quote multiple studies, such as a 1994 meta-analysis, which stated, “the association between past occupational exposure to hair colourants and bladder cancer risk is reasonably consistent on epidemiological data and plausible on biological grounds.”
The legal filing also alleges that these products “manufactured, supplied, licensed and/or placed into the stream of commerce by Defendants herein were defective and unreasonably dangerous…” and that “from the time that the PRODUCTS were first tested, studied, researched, evaluated, endorsed, manufactured, marketed and distributed, and up to the present, [Defendants] willfully deceived the Plaintiff and the public in general, by concealing…the true facts concerning the PRODUCTS, which…said Defendants had a duty to disclose.”
Legal counsel commentary
CosmeticsDesign spoke to Andrew Parker Felix of Morgan & Morgan, co-counsel for the plaintiff, who underscored three core allegations: failure to warn, defective design, and deceit by concealment.
“The lawsuit alleges that the Defendant companies failed to warn customers of the possible risks and health hazards that their products caused,” said Felix. “The products were defectively designed and failed to be tested for hazards, but were entered into the stream of commerce anyway.”
Felix said the firm’s legal team has reviewed “numerous peer-reviewed studies that establish a correlation between exposure to certain chemicals found in hair dye products and the development of various cancers.”
He added, “Based on this body of evidence, we believe our client is one of potentially thousands of individuals who may have suffered harm due to repeated exposure to these products.”
Felix also noted that this suit echoes themes in other ongoing litigation, including a separate case against hair relaxer manufacturers involving alleged links to uterine and ovarian cancers. “It’s another instance where beauty products have been linked to containing alleged carcinogenic chemicals,” he said.
When asked about the role of regulatory agencies like the FDA, Felix emphasized that primary responsibility lies with the manufacturers. “The lawsuit alleges that they knew of these possible harmful chemicals beforehand, but failed to warn the public about them,” he stated.
Beyond compensation, the legal team is pursuing broader changes. “Our goal with this lawsuit is to make our client whole, to bring awareness to the potential dangers of the chemicals in these everyday beauty products, and to compel these companies to make their products safer for consumers,” he concluded.
We also spoke to industry attorney Katie Bond, Partner at Keller and Heckman, LLP, about her insights into the suit’s potential trajectory and impact. As Bond noted, “these types of cases, if they go to trial, normally come down to a ‘battle of the experts,’ with issues like how valid the science might be linking hair dyes to bladder cancer, and how closely that science might ‘match’ the named brands.”
For instance, “did the brands ever contain the ingredients assessed in the research, and if so, in what amount?” she asked. As the case is litigated, “other issues would surely also arise, like whether the case was filed in a timely fashion”, said Bond, adding that “the complaint alleges that statutes of limitation should be ‘tolled until the day that Plaintiff knew or had reason to know that bladder cancer was linked’ to exposure to hair dyes.”
“Apart from the actual merits or scope of the plaintiffs, this case is not unlike those prior cases alleging that talcum powder caused ovarian cancer,” she said, “[and is] not unlike the class actions alleging that hair care products that contained formaldehyde-releasing ingredients caused hair loss or scalp burns.”
Moving forward, Bond said, “it will be interesting to see what happens here: if there is a settlement or if other cases, including class actions, will be filed.”
Defendants’ responses to allegations
CosmeticsDesign reached out to the named defendants in this lawsuit with a request to comment on the allegations and the ongoing action. A L’Oréal USA spokesperson, responding on behalf of L’Oréal USA as well as subsidiaries and named defendants Matrix and Redken, said: “At L’Oréal, product safety is our highest priority, [and] every product we create undergoes rigorous testing for quality, safety, and efficacy before it reaches the market.”
“Hair dye has been safely used by tens of millions of hairstylists and consumers around the world every single day, often over the course of a lifetime, [and] while we deeply empathize with these individuals in their search for answers regarding their illness, this lawsuit is entirely without scientific or legal merit,” added the spokesperson.
A spokesperson for Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), responding on behalf of BMS as well as former subsidiary and named defendant Clairol, stated: “BMS does not manufacture or sell consumer hair dye products, [and] the hair dye at issue was (allegedly) manufactured by a different company, Clairol Incorporated,” the spokesperson said.
“While Clairol was, at one time, an independent operating subsidiary of BMS, BMS divested Clairol in 2001, [and] BMS has no liability for products manufactured and sold by Clairol, and BMS will be seeking dismissal from the case on this basis,” they added.
Additionally, a spokesperson from defendant Henkel, responding on behalf of itself and subsidiary Joico, responded that “Henkel’s policy does not allow us to comment on litigation cases.”
CosmeticsDesign also received a response from KKR & Co., Inc., which declined to comment.
CosmeticsDesign reached out to Wella, Coty, P&G, and John Paul Mitchell, and all companies did not provide responses to our request to comment at the time of this publication.