Do blondes have more fun? An American judge had to consider the question in a recent case. It just shows, there is no limit on the type of philosophical challenge that can confront judges.

In this case, Charlotte Feeney was claiming damages from L’Oreal, the cosmetics company. She claimed her natural blonde hair, the blondeness of which she wanted to enhance, went dark brown after using the defendant’s product.

In her depositions, Feeney claimed she suffered sickness and acute anxiety when she saw her hair dark and then became clinically depressed. She contended she had suffered compensable loss because “blondes do get more attention than brunettes” and her social intercourse was impeded by having darker hair. Feeney said that it had become impossible to get her hair back to her natural colour, informing the court: “I stay at home more than ever in my life. I wear hats most of the time”.

Feeney argued that a brown colouring tube must have been negligently placed in a blonde product box. Her claim suggested that the hair colouring industry was obliged to put a warning on all boxed products explaining that the colour inside the tube might vary from the colour on the label.

L’Oreal contested her claim, arguing that a brown dye must have been purchased. It also entered the defence that, in any case, Feeney wouldn’t have suffered as she did if she’d have read and followed the packet’s instruction to carry out a hair strand test before applying the colour to her hair. The judge agreed, ruling that the claim was unsubstantiated. He noted that the claimant “submitted no facts, no opinions and no standards” to support her claim.

This was not the first American case in which blondeness has been an issue. In a case from Hillsboro, Oregon, a witness giving testimony described the hair colour of someone he had seen. To clarify what he meant, counsel asked him to point to someone in court with the same shade of hair. The witness said, pointing to a woman in court, “Well, something like hers except for more cheap bleached-blonde hair.” The prosecutor then said: “May the record reflect, your honour, the witness has identified defence counsel as the cheap blonde.”

Incidentally, the evidence that blondes have more fun is limited. Madonna once asserted that “the artifice of being blonde has some incredible sort of sexual connotation” — but that was not based on a study that would satisfy a law court. In Ministry of Defence v Jeremiah (1979), Lord Denning acknowledged that “a woman's hair is her crowning glory . . . she does not like it disturbed”, but he did not let the law prefer blondes.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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