Abby Steiner has filed a lawsuit against Puma and the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team, claiming that the design of spikes and running shoes that she wore that were jointly developed by the companies led to injures that impacted her sprinting career.
The product liability lawsuit was filed on April 14 in Massachusetts and in her complaint, Steiner says that the mechanics of her running were impacted by the shoe designs, use of carbon fiber and Puma’s nitrogen-infused midsole foam.
Steiner won two world championship titles in the women’s 4×100m and 4×400m relays in 2022 and is the U.S. indoor record holder in the 200m and 300m and said in her filing that she believed she shoes she wore were adequately tested but were “unsafe, unreasonably dangerous, defective and capable of causing injury and harms to consumers during ordinary, anticipated and foreseeable uses.”
The complaint also alleges that Puma and Mercedes knew that consumers and professional runners were not qualified to inspect the shoes for potential defects and that she believed the products would be “properly designed, developed, tested, manufactured, marketed, promoted, advertised, sold and distributed free from defects.”
Puma and Mercedes teamed up in 2021 Faster+ series of spikes that were billed as the “fastest, lightest and most propulsive” shoe of its kind and was developed with input from André De Grasse and Karsten Warholm. During the development, Puma looked for ways to decrease weight in the spike and contacted the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team on ways to weave carbon fiber in the midfoot of the shoe.
The design techniques would eventually be incorporated into other Puma models and Steiner’s complaint lists three Puma shoes, the Deviate Nitro Elite 2, Deviate Nitro Elite 3 and evoSPEED Tokyo Nitro and evoSPEED Tokyo Nitro 400M as shoes that she previously wore when she began dealing with injuries. All four models use carbon fiber weaving or plates.
Steiner signed with Puma in 2022 and dealt with foot injuries in 2023 and had three surgeries through 2025. She last competed at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene.
She detailed her nature of her injuries and surgeries on social media in August 2024, around a month after the trials. Steiner said after rehab following double Haglunds surgery on her feet a year earlier she resumed training but felt pain in her left foot.
In early 2024 she worked through the pain with the hopes of making the national team, including pulling out of some earlier track meets. Her bid to make the Olympic team fell short when she finished sixth in the women’s 200m. Steiner said weeks after returning home and she was unable to walk properly and an MRI showed a bone spur and partial Achilles tendon tear, leading to another surgery.
“I’ve been trying to find a reason for this season and have definitely been feeling all the emotions with this,” Steiner said in her post. “This sport can be really, really hard sometimes. But I also have dealt with enough adversity to know that greatness is usually on the other side of these mountains. Most of all I really love running pain free and I can’t wait to get back to that.”
