The complaints allege carbon fiber plate and Nitrofoam technology caused permanent foot and Achilles injuries. All three suits share the same counsel and court, and extend claims to every PUMA model using the technology.
When US sprint star Abby Steiner sued PUMA in April, the case could still be read as a single athlete’s grievance. Six weeks later, that reading is no longer available.
Two further elite track athletes have filed similar product liability suits raising overlapping claims against the German brand and its development partner Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd., represented by the same counsel, in the same Massachusetts court, while Nike defends a parallel case over its Alphafly 2 on the US West Coast.
The “super-shoe,” the most commercially significant footwear innovation of the past decade, is acquiring a litigation profile.
Jamaican Olympic hurdler Damion Thomas Jr. and US world championship relay gold medalist Champion Allison filed separate complaints in Massachusetts Superior Court on June 9, according to reporting by The Athletic and the Boston Globe. Both allege that PUMA footwear built around carbon fiber plates (CFP) and the brand’s nitrogen-infused Nitrofoam increased mechanical stress on feet and lower legs, and that the companies marketed the shoes as safe without adequate disclosure of injury risks. The counts span negligent design, manufacturing defect, failure to warn, and breach of warranty.
The shoes named differ between the complaints, but both extend the claims to any PUMA model using CFP or Nitrofoam technology. Steiner’s April complaint cited the Deviate Nitro Elite 2 and 3 and the evoSPEED Tokyo Nitro spikes. Mercedes declined to comment; PUMA had been approached for comment at the time of reporting.
Two careers that stalled after signing
Both plaintiffs joined PUMA in 2022, and both saw their competitive trajectories break down shortly afterward.
Allison won gold on the US 4x400m relay team at the 2022 World Championships, the same season he ran a personal best of 43.70 seconds – among the fastest 400m times in history; his complaint states he can no longer compete at his pre-injury level. Thomas Jr., the 2021 NCAA indoor 60m hurdles champion, reached the semifinals of the 110m hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics. His results then slid through 2024, when he underwent surgery to remove a bone spur in his foot. His complaint describes “severe and permanent” injuries that ended his ability to compete at Olympic level. All three Massachusetts plaintiffs link their 2022 signings with PUMA – and the switch to its CFP footwear – to a subsequent cluster of foot, Achilles, and bone stress injuries, including Haglund’s deformity.
PUMA’s running resurgence has been one of the brand’s headline strategic stories: the suits now attach a cost narrative to that same investment.
From one filing to a pipeline?
Peter J. Flowers of Meyers & Flowers, who represents all three athletes, told Front Office Sports that runners and coaches contacted his firm with similar foot injuries after Steiner’s filing became public. In the firm’s announcement, Flowers argued the issue extends beyond elite sport to recreational runners who may never connect their injuries to their footwear.
The scientific record remains unsettled, resting on limited and still-developing evidence. A 2023 review in Sports Medicine, cited in the US litigation against Nike, documented case reports of bone stress injuries in athletes using CFP footwear and described altered foot and ankle mechanics, while stressing the evidence is preliminary.
The category was built on a speed claim. Its legal test will be a safety one.
