Bell Sports has reached a product liability settlement with an Indiana woman who claimed her Bell Universal pedal broke off while she was riding, resulting in a crash and injuries.
According to the lawsuit, the woman suffered damages totaling nearly $5 million. Bell's Universal pedal is compatible with both 12-inch and 9/16-inch cranks, thanks to included adapters that thread into crank arms; the pedals' non-standard axles then thread onto the adapters.
A jury trial was set to begin on December 5 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Indianapolis. However, both parties informed the court that they had reached an agreement. They had 30 days to file a joint motion to dismiss the case, according to the court.
A spokesman for Bell, which is owned by Vista Outdoor, declined to comment on the settlement. Terms were not disclosed.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff was involved in a crash in August 2018 when the Bell alloy pedal on her bike failed catastrophically.
According to the lawsuit, she suffered traumatic, permanent, and painful injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, and incurred medical expenses, pain and suffering, and other monetary damages.
In a July 2021 filing, the plaintiff's attorneys stated that she had suffered $4,789,040 in damages.
According to the lawsuit, the Bell pedal and adapter system were defective and unreasonable dangerous.
According to court documents, Bell developed, designed, and marketed the pedals and adapters in collaboration with YinJiang Ningbo, China-based manufacturer Ningo Detai Machinery Co. Ltd. Bell denied that the pedals were defective or that it was responsible for Sandlin's injuries, claiming that the pedals were not manufactured by it. Ningo Detai was not a party to the proceedings.
According to pre-trial testimony from a plaintiff's expert, the right pedal on the bike partially unthreaded from the crank adapter, resulting in a fatigue crack on the adapter and its eventual failure, as well as the pedal's separation from the bike when the woman rode it.
The expert testified that the threads connecting the adapter to the pedal spindle were not the self-tightening threads that have been used on bicycle pedals for more than a century. The traditional threading orientation is intended to use the precession effect to keep pedals from unthreading in normal use. The Bell Universal adapter has a threaded shaft that threads into a hole in the pedal spindle. A report filed with the court concluded that this thread orientation created a self-loosening joint on both the right and left pedals.
However, the court later granted a motion by Bell Sports to exclude Coté's testimony about the precession effect, which Bell's lawyers claimed was an untested theory. One of Bell's expert witnesses did not dispute the precession effect explanation but claimed that the thread lock solution included with the inserts would prevent the pedal from unthreading.
Another report filed with the court for the plaintiff by Material and Engineering Group LLC of Belmont, Massachusetts, concluded that the adapter was made of a case of hardened metal, making it too brittle for the application and prone to fatigue failure.
At Bell's request, the court excluded portions of the MEG report from the evidence. Bell referred to the report as "scientific guesswork," claiming that the author lacked specific industry knowledge, did not test his theory, and did not know if the adapter deviated from manufacturing specifications.
In addition, the court sided with the plaintiff in rejecting testimony from several of Bell's witnesses.
