Nike Sued By Former NCAA Division I Runner, Claims Foot Fractures Caused by Carbon Shoes

Triathlon Forum
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Originally published at: https://slowtwitch.com/running/nike-sued-by-former-ncaa-division-i-runner-claims-foot-fractures-caused-by-carbon-shoes/

Nike, the pioneer of carbon-plated footwear, has been sued by a former NCAA Division I athlete who claims that the AlphaFly 2 caused her to suffer a catastrophic fracture in her foot.

Heather Cerney’s attorneys filed the suit against the footwear behemoth this week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which alleges Cerney suffered a sesamoid fracture in her left foot due to the carbon plate and geometry of the AlphaFly.

Cerney ran track and cross-country for the University of California, Berkeley. She ran mostly distance events during her tenure there from 2011 to 2015, with appearances at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships. Her best event on track was the 1500, whereas she performed best at 5 kilometers at cross country.

The suit includes allegations of product liability, negligence, failure to warn, and breaches of both express and implied warranties. It also states that Cerney was unaware of any potential risks of carbon-plated footwear.

According to the suit, Cerney paid full retail plus local tax of nearly $300 for the AlphaFly 2 in November 2023. She then wore the shoes for the first time for the San Francisco Turkey Trot, a 5 mile road race. Cerney finished as the second overall female and won her age group. After the race, the suit claims Cerney began suffering from severe pain in her left foot.

Testing showed a fracture in a sesamoid. The sesamoid bones are two small bones underneath the joint of the first metatarsal. It effectively acts much like a kneecap does, facilitating movement during walking and running activities. Cerney was forced to undergo surgery for the injury, as sesamoid fractures are susceptible to necrosis due to a lack of available blood supply.

According to the complaint, Cerney has been left with a permanent partial disability despite the medical intervention, which impacts both her daily life and her ability to work. Cerney is no longer able to run competitively. The suit references both an ongoing loss of earnings as well as loss of potential earning capacity as a result of the injury.

The suit references heavily a 2023 article published in Sports Medicine, titled “Bone Stress Injuries in Runners Using Carbon Fiber Plate Footwear.” Authors of that article include Dr. Adam Tenforde, a professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. That article came after the study of five navicular bone fractures in what it called “highly competitive athletes,” and assessed the potential risks related to the geometry and stresses from running in carbon-plated shoes. Particularly relevant to Cerney’s case, the article includes an image showing the geometry of the carbon-fiber plate, and the location of the fulcrum point of it: directly underneath the metatarsal phalangeal joints and the sesamoid Cerney fractured.

As many runners can attest, the benefits of carbon-plated footwear are relatively clear: faster running. According to the landmark New York Times article, carbon shoes can help runners save upwards of four percent of their race time using the shoe; these are the kinds of margins that can make or break, for instance, a Boston Marathon qualifying time or not.

Nike, of course, is no longer the sole brand offering a carbon-plated running shoe. Nearly every manufacturer offers some type of carbon racer in their product line. In our recent articles on the preferred running shoes of professional triathletes, Nike no longer registers within the peak of the field. In its place appears brands like On, ASICS, HOKA, Puma, New Balance, Adidas, and Saucony.

That said, it sometimes does not pay to be the first brand on the innovation front. Vibram, which led the minimalism movement with their FiveFingers product line, was forced to settle a class-action lawsuit in 2014 for false advertising and injuries stemming from wearers being introduced to “barefoot” concepts. It is possible this is just the first of what could be many suits going forward.

Nike did not provide comment to media when contacted about the suit. For a more detailed analysis of the legal procedure likely to occur from here, you can read this article from sports attorney Michael McCann.

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Well it is not a surprise that a rigid plate under the ball of the foot will effect some natural running mechanics and pressure points under the foot differently than shoes that move in unison with our bones. Let’s see, what more comes out. She can’t be the only one out there.

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They are going to have a HELL of a time proving the shoe was the cause of the stress fracture. The sesamoid bones aren’t going to suffer catastrophic failure like that from a single 5 mile run in a seasoned high level runner. They are injuries of cumulative stress.

Nike’s lawyers are going to have an easy time finding any competent specialist in bone stress injuries (BSIs) and they will scour her training history and racing history etc.

They will also have to prove that the shoe caused an issue and not user error…this seems frivolous.

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To be fair, this is also how the whole Vibram suits started. And that eventually resulted in a settlement where I received my $7.

Lesson number one of product liability: just when you’ve made it idiot-proof, they go and build a bigger idiot.

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I hate these shoes, but this suit is frivolous . Perhaps runners thinking they are immortal with these shoes, and end up over training

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Exactly. The same linked article also has another article which states that the injuries are often related to overtraining.

The boom of the “super shoe” had people thinking, as you said, they were able to run faster and run more. Spikes in volume and intensity are the reason for cumulative stress RRIs (running related injuries) in steady state runners.

Shoes have come in all manners of size and weight and toe drop and outsole material and stack height etc. The wall of running shoe options is like a grocery store. Regardless of the option, you need need to abide by a sound training/racing program.

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The idiots are getting bigger…and faster lol.

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Ha, only morons bought into that whole fad and the fingered shoes….On another note, got a pair of barley used size 10 1/2 for sale…From a friend… (-;

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Some of us sold those shoes at the time, too…

Tony Post wound up OK, though.

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Just pointing out that the mechanics of carbon plated shoes substantially changes the loading on the bones relative to non plated shoes ..whether it caused her break or not is irrelevant the carbon shoes change foot mechanics..for some people.it would be a non topic for others more stress (whether one breaks or not is not the point). From here lawyers can do what they want but there will be more people with niggles and limitations caused by plated shoes for sure.

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Lots of differences between shoes will cause loading differences: midsole durometer, drop, forefoot width, etc., etc. This is not something exclusive to carbon plates (and not all carbon plates are the same [ex. the Adidas rods]).

IMO, bottom line is that the shoe that works great for you might wreck me and vice versa. The onus is on the user to use shoes that work for them. It’s not like these were the only shoes (or training) that could have caused her injury.

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Notionally you and I are aligned that different shoes will interact with each runner differently, but just like vibrams don’t work for a large swath of runners (they were always fine for me but I just was not stupid enough to use then on anything but grass), carbon plates may not be good all the time for certain runners, but that’s going to be a large enough swath that the lawyers will eventually have some fun with it.

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I suggest suing the running store (and/or employee) that fitted and sold her the shoes…might be a stronger case than what this is….(all the pink)

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The carbon plates dissipate the ground reaction force to make the runners more efficient. A very reductionist was if looking at it is the supershoes cause less breakdown of the body due to the degenerative nature of the GRFs. So for the same effort, the runners will be X% more efficient because they breakdown X% less and can gonX% faster. Nike realized that ax percent translates into 4% hence the name of the 2016 shoe.

Funny enough carbon plates have been around since the 90s with Reebok and Adidas trying their hand at the game. The stiffness was the issue back then and they weren’t widely adopted.

Modern tech has found a way to minimize stiffness AND weight while maximizing cushioning and effectiveness of the outsole, and some with the carbon technology.

Some supershoes have a full plate, some partial, and some just having the carbon “fingers.”

I’m not trying to tell you anything you don’t know as I know from my time on the forum you are very well-read and intelligent. I guess im trying to highlight all of the details that make lawsuits like this completely bullshit.

So many different shoes have features that will drastically alter the mechanics and loading bias on the body. As will a runners adopted running gait. A runner with a rear foot strike that chooses a minimalist shoe and low drop is going to thrash their knees real quickly and cause issues higher up the chain. Likewise a runner with repetitive calf and history of foot issues will be in a world of hurt if they continue doing x, Y, Z also. Or they train hills as well, etc.

There are any number of details starting with training chocies and nutrition, sleep, that will lead to user error for these things.

I have no clue what is in Nike’s best interest but while Vibrams revenue in the hundreds of millions settled, I hope Nikes substantially larger $46 Billion revenue will mount a legal team that wipes the floor with this suit.

I’ll step off my soapbox now.

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Isn’t this like a novice driver buying a sports car that isn’t used to the power, acceleration, braking and controls? It’s not the car or manufacturers fault unless there’s a proven safety issue. And based on the great success of these super shoes for the majority of runners, it’s, IMO, going to be a massive uphill battle to prove defect or breach.

Sorry for the lengthy morning replies. Currently anxiously waiting for Philly to start. This is a good distraction lol.

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I agree with everything you and @Titanflexr have said. I think the subtle point here on “user error” is that there has been no general forewarning widely that the addition of the carbon plate changes foot mechanics (just bending several plates makes a difference to foot loading) and shoe OEMs have largely said nothing on this change in dynamic. I can immediately tell the difference in foot loading between my plated shoes and non plated shoes with the same drop which is why I don’t run in my plated shoes all the time, because I have a gait from 60 years of walking and 58 years of running and I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with that all the time, whereas I did grow up with flat soccer cleats and track spikes for 20 years so sprinting around with vibrams on grass just felt more natural for me. Zero drop high padded shoes like Altras feel like running on a grass field and kinda natural, running in my plated Asics or Brooks feel like a somewhat different motion so I use them sparingly as I got to this point in life being able to run when many of my peers were done 20 years ago, and minimally racing 60-64, it’s more about getting to start lines than raw 1 mile or 6 mile speed.

As for the law suit, I hope it gets wiped out, but brings attention to “plated shoes are different…your injury probablity may vary…enter with caution”

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I just realized that you are replying to the public article. I am reply to that article inside the ST forum. Your comments are showing up in the forum as well as on the public article, so I knew I recognized the name. By the way, I first saw the article on my facebook feed, not on the Slowtwitch home page which I had not visited (@rrheisler that’s why front page and thread titles work)

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Zoot had carbon spans in their shoes from 2010-2013

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Yep. But typically that was a bridge in the mid foot, trying to provide the kind of structural integrity that you found in other shoes with all that rigid plastic around the mid foot.

Most brands have gone away from that…

But this isn’t the first, nor the last time, that any of the shoe manufacturers have gotten sued over “new” tech. It’s just the first time for so-called “super” shoes.

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I don’t want a lawsuit “win” for the claimant, but if what comes out of this is a general warning around the lines of “the design of this shoe substantially changes mechanics at the midfoot, users proceed at their own risk” I think that’s sufficient. Speed always seems free until it isn’t. There is enough emerging research out there to show SOME downsides of some of these shoe systems. No doubt they are faster but there could be a possibility of a cost to some users that consumers probably need some warning about. A lot of people there are zero problems.