A concert violinist went undercover to get justice after a faulty Pilates machine put her in a wheelchair and wrecked her career.
Maya Meron, who has three children and had appeared on the BBC’s annual summer classical music festival and with the London Symphony Orchestra, was doing a “downward-facing dog” when the reformer machine’s support bar gave way. She was “catapulted” forwards and knocked unconscious for about half a minute.
An ambulance took her to hospital and she was left in pain with a fractured elbow, severe abdominal injuries and long-term nerve damage. “I was shattered,” she said. “I had to cancel all concerts and suddenly thought that I had no life.”
When the gym said there was no evidence to prove wrongdoing by its owner or its staff, Meron began her own inquiry with the help of private investigators.
Seven years on, the 45-year-old has won a “very substantial” financial settlement.
On Monday, the Israeli musician spoke to The Times from New York, where she was recovering from her fifth operation since the accident at the Heartcore studio, Hampstead, north London, in 2019.
She said she had been weeks from the legal time limit for a claim when the gym’s management agreed to allow her to inspect the Pilates machines.
A reformer Pilates machine. Heartcore studio uses machines called Coreformers
ALAMY
Heartcore focuses on a Pilates programme during which participants use a machine called the Coreformer. Several celebrities are reported to have used the gym, including the Duchess of Sussex, who declared it her “favourite workout” in an article she wrote for Vogue in 2019.
Meron went back to the gym with her lawyers and a health and safety expert where they were met by management, its legal team and insurers. “We went into a room with about 40 machines, but it did not feel the same,” Meron recalled. It then emerged that there was one solitary machine in a side room “where everybody put their coats — that was the machine”.
Lawyers still maintained that there was insufficient evidence to bring a claim or force a settlement. But the day before Christmas, said Meron, “instead of shopping for gifts for my children, I went back to the gym in disguise”. At the time, London was in the midst of the Covid pandemic and Meron wore a mask and signed in under an assumed name, posing in the class as an “inept beginner”.
Eventually, she went to ten branches of the gym to assess Pilates machines, having instructed private investigators to accompany her so they could take photographs. “Eventually, I discovered that there was a pedal on the machine that gets stuck and makes the machine malfunction,” said Meron, adding that she and the private detectives made recordings of the machines.
In one case an instructor told Meron and investigators that it was possible to do a series of exercises without the machine malfunctioning — but eventually it would go wrong if enough weight were put on it. “Even my husband wasn’t aware that I was doing this,” said Meron of her investigations, adding that “the more I found out, the more I kept going and discovered that it happened at other studios.”
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Presented with the evidence, Heartcore settled with Meron after having paid an initial interim payment of £250,000 in 2023. The full amount of damages was agreed only at the beginning of this month and is confidential, but Meron — who said she refused to agree to a gagging order — has described the amount as “very substantial”.
During the dispute, lawyers for Meron told the High Court that she experienced pain in her left wrist when she played the violin. She has also noted “decreased strength, particularly in her little finger, which particularly affects her ability to play her musical instrument”.
The court was told that Meron’s suffering was greater because she was “so reliant on dexterous motion” in her arm for her work.
Meron told The Times that the injury had initially crushed her psychologically as well as physically. She had played the violin and viola since she was seven and said: “It was my life, my social life, it was everything professionally and spiritually.”
The operation in New York on her nerve connection was high risk but Meron said the doctors were positive about the outcome.
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“This latest operation has given me hope,” she said. “For the first time in seven years I’m properly moving my fingers. It would be my dream to play professionally again. Even when my nerves were compressed and I could barely move my fingers, I would try to play.”
But the injury also badly affected Meron’s abdomen and has left her requiring a wheelchair for even modest distances.
Lawyers for Heartcore were contacted for comment. A legal spokesman for Schuring, whose eight studios still use the Coreformer machines, told the Daily Mail, which first reported the story: “The claim was resolved by Heartcore’s insurers on a commercial basis. Heartcore remains committed to the safety and wellbeing of all its members and continues to review its equipment in accordance with industry standards.”
