Self Employed: Who does a customer 'belong to'?

56cheffy

A friend is a self employed masseur. 
He has now set up on his own and many of his customers have followed.
The shop where he worked previously split what the customer paid 50/50.
Do the customers belong to the shop or to the masseur?

getmore4less

What did the B2B contract with the place they worked say?

Comms69

Free market, dont belong to anyone

TELLIT01

Customers are free to take their custom where they want.  As he no longer works from the previous premises that business has no right to anything.

SpiderLegs

Comms69 said:

Free market, dont belong to anyone

TELLIT01 said:

Customers are free to take their custom where they want.  As he no longer works from the previous premises that business has no right to anything.

Two absolutely terrible responses.

getmore4less said:

What did the B2B contract with the place they worked say?

The correct response. Only by knowing what the previous agreement was can anyone answer the OP’s question.

nicechap

SpiderLegs said:

Comms69 said:

Free market, dont belong to anyone

TELLIT01 said:

Customers are free to take their custom where they want.  As he no longer works from the previous premises that business has no right to anything.

Two absolutely terrible responses.

getmore4less said:

What did the B2B contract with the place they worked say?

The correct response. Only by knowing what the previous agreement was can anyone answer the OP’s question.

No, both Comms69 and Tellit01 are correct as is getmore4less.

We got rid of slavery a long time ago so no entity is entitled to "own" a person, and a customer can exercise free choice about who to provide them with services.

However, where a business entity is providing a service within another business entity's offering, then its quite possible to include a non-compete clause for when that situation is no longer operating.  Its also not uncommon for employee contracts to have non-compete clauses (or non-poaching clauses) when employees leave but they are very difficult to enforce, are very much context dependent and very far outside of the ability of a forum like this to provide proper guidance on.

TELLIT01

When our hairdresser decided to go independant, she gave many of her customers he phone number and said they could phone her if they wanted to.  She didn't poach custom.

JReacher1

TELLIT01 said:

When our hairdresser decided to go independant, she gave many of her customers he phone number and said they could phone her if they wanted to.  She didn't poach custom.

The hairdresser provided her contact details to customers of the salon she worked in and said if they wished they could leave the salon she worked at and go to her new place. That seems to be the very definition of poaching customers. She may not have aggressively poached them but she has made an effort by providing her phone number to poach the customers from her previous place of work. 

OP as has been stated it depends on what sort of contract was in place. Normally situations like this would be covered by a legal agreement although the original 50% cut to the owner seems high.