14 DAY TRIAL // Jessica Bennington is anorexic and a gym freak. At one point, she weighed a mere 28 kg and was so ill-looking that her former gym canceled her subscription. Desperate to work out what she thought was body fat, Bennington went to another gym where, to her amazement, they accepted her as she was. Now, she’s taking the second gym to court because she could have killed herself, as doctors later found out, the Daily Mail says.
Anorexia, as it’s already well known, comes with a string of health issues that make even the simplest action potentially dangerous for the sufferer. From this perspective, taking out a gym subscription is utter madness, but Miss Bennington seems to be covered on this end, since doctors have established she was not at her full mental capacity at the time she went to the gym she’s now suing. Therefore, it was up to the gym to turn her down, just like trainers where she had her older subscription did when they saw how frail she was.
Luckily for her, Jennifer did not even get to put a foot on the treadmill or lift some weights, since she fell ill shortly after getting her new subscription and was admitted to the hospital. It was there, she says, that she found out what she had done and how she could have risked her life – a fact that the staff at the gym should have been aware of, she reveals for the Mail, especially since it was clear she was sick. At the time of the incident, Bennington weighed a mere 28 kg. She’s now a healthier 44 kg, on her way to recovery.
“At the time I was angry with my old gym but now I look back and see they were just acting responsibly. It doesn’t take a trained eye to see I was obviously very ill and totally emaciated. There is no way at four-and-a-half stone that I was healthy enough for LA Fitness to take me on. It wasn’t me signing that contract, it was the anorexia. I have taken legal advice and have been told that gyms do have a duty of care to ensure they identify any health problems. They should have refused me a membership but they just wanted my money, even if it was obvious I was too ill to join.” Bennington tells the Mail.
The gym in question, LA Fitness, has already issued a statement, saying it canceled her subscription the moment it was notified she was not healthy. As a gesture of good will, it has also refunded her, but has refrained from making a comment on whether it should have taken her in the first place.