Botox war breaks out in suburban Brisbane

A bitter Botox war has broken out in a suburban shopping centre after a former worker at the nation’s second-largest cosmetic chain jumped ship and allegedly criticised her former employer on Facebook.

A BITTER Botox war has broken out in a suburban shopping centre after a former worker at the nation’s second-largest cosmetic chain jumped ship and allegedly criticised her former employer on Facebook.

The cosmetic surgery dispute has landed in the Supreme Court.

The owners of the Australian Skin Clinics (ASC) franchise in Westfield North Lakes, north of Brisbane, have filed a claim in the Supreme Court alleging that after cosmetic nurse Susan Kent quit in November and went to work for a rival within the same shopping complex, she posted on Facebook that “she doesn’t recommend” her former employer.

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The salon also wants Mrs Kent banned from poaching her former clients.

Franchise owner Joe Chih-Tsai Yang, from Rochedale, has asked the court to make her former employee return all confidential information, including client phone numbers.

Mr Yang has also asked that Mrs Kent, who now works for Laser Clinic Australia (LCA), be banned from “disparaging or denigrating” ASC’s North Lakes franchise, and apologise, according to the claim filed on January 14 in Brisbane.

Mr Yang told the court that Mrs Kent assured her she would be working “at a hospital” and “taking some time off work” after her resignation on November 15, but within three weeks she was working for rival LCA.

She claims Mrs Kent’s work contract bars her from soliciting her former clients, but that she breached the contract by contacting them via text-message in December, offering them appointments at LCA.

ASC North Lakes clinic manager Wallis Hough told the court that Mrs Kent told her in November she was quitting because “she was worth more”, and denied she was going to work for LCA.

Mrs Hough alleges Mrs Kent told her seven months earlier that LCA had “approached her and offered her” a job.

Mrs Hough told the court that ASC clients had told her they felt it was “very unprofessional” for Mrs Kent to text them after leaving her job.

Mrs Kent and her company SK Aesthetics Pty Ltd, have not filed a defence to the claims.

The case is due in court on January 31.

Originally published as Botox war breaks out in suburban Brisbane