Corning seeks dismissal of IBM claims in Mercedes-Benz Stadium DAS lawsuit

Corning asked a Georgia court last week to dismiss the negligence and other claims filed against it last year by IBM in a lawsuit regarding the distributed antenna system (DAS) at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, claiming in part that IBM was responsible for any performance issues since it “failed to follow Corning’s design,” among other issues.

Since neither side is speaking publicly yet about the issue, we are pretty much left with the court document filings as the only way to figure out what exactly went wrong with the DAS installation at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which opened in 2017. While IBM has claimed that the issues were Corning’s fault, Friday’s filing (which we have not yet seen) has Corning putting the blame back on IBM and its outside DAS deployment contractors.

According to a story posted on Law360 (subscription required), Corning’s motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia also had a brief which said “IBM attempts to ignore the terms specified in its contract with Corning — and the work it actually contracted Corning to do — by bringing its own fraud and negligence claims along with purportedly assigned tort claims.” The Law360 story said Corning further “argued that the claims either are barred by the economic loss rule or a so-called merger clause in the contracts, or cannot be assigned to the hardware giant by the NFL team or the prime contractor on the project.”

A Corning spokesperson provided the following official comment from the company:

“Corning has provided successful DAS network solutions for dozens of major sports venues around the world. At Mercedes Benz Stadium, Corning performed under its contract with IBM, while IBM failed to follow Corning’s design, failed to provide the DAS for commissioning on time due to hundreds of IBM installation errors, and then failed to optimize the DAS; an area that was IBM’s responsibility. Regarding IBM’s lawsuit, Corning denies the allegations asserted by IBM, and Corning will vigorously defend its work at Mercedes Benz Stadium and its world-class reputation in Court. “

The Law360 story had the following comment from an IBM spokesperson:

“Corning delivered a flawed cellular system to the Falcons and IBM, and then failed to fix it. IBM stepped in and spent a year to deliver state-of-the-art cellular performance for fans, and
Corning is now accountable for failing to live up to its obligations.”