A pre-wedding beauty treatment went horribly awry when a novice esthetician burned the groom’s cornea while tinting his eyelashes, according to a new lawsuit.
Now Manhattan resident Justin Reeves, who received the treatment as a gift ahead of his Jan. 2, 2016, wedding to Mario Espinoza, is suing for $250,000.
Reeves went to the Benefit Cosmetics Brows-A-Go-Go store on Lexington Avenue and East 63rd Street on Dec. 6 to have his lashes dyed for the first time.
The esthetician warned that the process might make his eyes feel “peppery,” but Reeves, 35, says in court papers the sensation was more like having “jalapeño peppers in his eyes.”
When Reeves complained, the female esthetician responded, “You see the pain we women go through?”
The next morning, Reeves’ eyes were red and full of pus, and he noticed what appeared to be a burn mark under his cornea, his Manhattan civil suit says.
When he called Benefit, the esthetician admitted she’d never been trained to use the product and should have first tested it on his skin, court papers state.
Reeves underwent months of treatment and had to spend his whole wedding weekend explaining why his eyes were so red.
A spokeswoman for Benefit said she was looking into the matter.