I think Puma shoes might be especially aggressive.
Personally, I try to cycle a different pair/model/brand of shoes every day.
1 Like
Her supposition is that any running shoe must allow you to run world-class weekly milage without getting injured or it’s defective. IME 90% of the shoes on the market would result in me getting injured, and the onus on me is to run in shoes I can tolerate. Probably the same for many/most folks.
3 Likes
since she claims pumas product was defective, I would say she has to proof that the product was defective, no? ie I would assume she run in carbon shoes of another brand before, and specifically blames the nitro froam and puma plates
Seems an interesting case as Steiner is a sprinter, clearly not running big mileage/volume. So not the kind of stress that these shoes put on distance runners… I have no idea about what implications for sprints. No lawyer, but seems like it could be a challenge to prove. Then again, maybe the strategy is to get a settlement.
disclaimer: not a lawyer, I just slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night
Massachusetts legal standard on this is weird (which, unless there’s some type of arbitration provision in her original contract with Puma and/or choice of forum / laws bit, they’re going to be using MA law for almost all of this),
Her lawyers outlined a so-called prima facie case – basically, the textbook definition of a product liability suit. Those elements are (courtesy of Cornell Law):
- The defendant sells a product that the plaintiff uses
- The defendant is the commercial seller of such a product
- The plaintiff suffers an injury
- When the defendant sold the item, the item was defective
- The defect was an actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury
You’ll note that defect isn’t defined, and that’s because it is generally a matter of facts as opposed to a matter of law. For determination of a product defect, there’s usually three buckets for those to fit into: design defects (e.g., the product might be good at what it was intended to do but it also creates a dangerous situation); manufacturing defects (e.g., bad batches of steel might cause a building failure); or defects in marketing (failure to warn consumers of dangers of the product, misrepresentation, etc.)
Steiner’s claim covers all three bases on this. That might get whittled down, but you might as well cover all your bases up front.
Massachusetts uses a couple of different legal standards as to determination of “defect” under those three potential causes above. For design defects, there’s the risk-utility test, which balances the gravity of the danger, likelihood of harm, feasibility of a safer alternative design, costs of improvement, and adverse consequences of a safer design. For manufacturing defects, there’s the consumer expectations test. E.g., regardless of the duty of care exhibited by the manufacturer, if it differs from the intended design at all and creates a dangerous situation, there’s likely to be liability. And then for defective marketing, there’s a failure to warn provision - manufacturers must provide adequate instructions and warnings regarding foreseeable risks, with liability arising for inadequate warnings.
Of the claims, I tend to think the failure to warn provision is the most likely one to stick as, well, just show that the load stresses of running in carbon shoes is different than that of running in non-carbon shoes and then tie your running in said carbon shoes to the injury.
@Dan_Funk yes, this is likely going to wind up settled with some type of confidentiality agreement in place, would be my guess. It’s different than the Nike case in that it involves a sponsored athlete, so the contract may have some provisions regarding where this case winds up from a forum perspective, but otherwise…curious when we see the third one, and against whom.
Exactly
My thought was that her injury wasn’t caused so much by the super shoes themselves, but from switching back & forth from those to spikes?
I could be wrong, of course