The On Squeak Complaint Was Undone by the Buyers’ Own Reddit Screenshots

Buyers who say On’s CloudTec shoes squeak have until Sept. 3 to file a new complaint, or see it dismissed with prejudice. Judge Karin J. Immergut ruled on Aug. 13 that the Reddit and TikTok posts they submitted as proof of the defect also showed the alleged squeak was no secret.

Immergut sits in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, and she granted On’s motion to dismiss. None of the three claims survived: New York General Business Law sections 349 and 350, the catch-all provision of Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, and Massachusetts Chapter 93A. The dismissal is without prejudice, and the plaintiffs have 21 days to come back with a new complaint.

Eric Breindel of New York, Joseph Injaychock of Pennsylvania and Ryan Nager of Massachusetts each bought Cloudsurfers. None alleged On lied about the shoes. The claim was that the company knew the CloudTec outsole, the grid of hexagonal, octagonal and oval cutouts under the shoe, produced what the filing called “a loud, embarrassing, and difficult to stop squeaking sound,” and never said so. The complaint puts retail at $140 to $180 and says On told complaining customers the noise fell under “normal wear and tear,” which its warranty does not cover. The case was filed on Oct. 9 by two different buyers, and the original complaint named 11 models including the Cloudmonster.

To show the problem was widespread, the complaint reproduced Reddit screenshots and cited TikTok communities. Immergut used that material against them. New York only treats silence as deception when the buyer had no reasonable way to find the fact alone. These buyers did: information about the alleged squeak sat “in the possession of anyone who looked up potential issues with Defendant’s product online.” She found the omission immaterial as well. “Common sense dictates that all shoes squeak under certain conditions,” the order says, and the complaint never defined how loud or persistent a squeak has to be.

Pennsylvania law requires a duty to speak before silence can deceive, and the court found none: no fiduciary relationship, no information On alone held, and a squeak from an unusual rubber outsole counts as a “common, frequent, and expected” risk. That reading rests on a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision from March, Halpern v. Ricoh U.S.A., which held that a vendor’s silence cannot deceive anyone unless the vendor owed a duty to disclose in the first place. Immergut cites it twice. For Massachusetts she applied a Federal Trade Commission cost-benefit standard from a 1984 case about tractor gas tanks that sprayed hot fuel. Because the squeak threatens nobody’s safety, she found little benefit in compelling disclosure, and the plaintiffs’ rule, she wrote, “lacks any limiting principle.”

On’s argument, reported by the Portland Business Journal, was that shoe noise is unremarkable across footwear. It put four brand help pages before the court, accepted only for that point: Nike’s “5 Solutions to Stop Shoes From Squeaking”, plus versions from KANE Footwear, Merrell and Clarks. None comes from a run-specialty label. Brooks publishes the same sort of page, blaming air and moisture trapped under the insole and recommending talcum powder or tape, and it does not treat the noise as a warranty defect either.

On reported second-quarter results two days before the ruling. Sales reached CHF 850.3 million (about $1.05 billion), with the Americas up 4.5 percent to CHF 451.6 million (about $557 million), but that fell short of the CHF 881.4 million analysts expected, and the shares opened about 20 percent down on Aug. 11.

A second amended complaint filed by Sept. 3 keeps the case alive in Oregon. Miss the date and the dismissal becomes one with prejudice. On’s quarterly release, which also notes the recently launched Cloudboom Strike 2, says the Cloudsurfer 3 arrives later this year with a new foam called SURREAL, giving the shoe at the center of the case a successor before it is resolved.