“His feet hit the mat, and almost instantly his knees buckled down, and he just let out the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.” That is how Kaitlin “Kati” Hill described the moment her three-year-old son, Colton, suffered a broken femur during a “Toddler Time” session at a trampoline park. Her warning, shared hundreds of thousands of times across North America, echoes a terrifying reality that we see in our practice every day: these facilities are not the safe havens for family fun they claim to be. They are industrial-scale energy-transfer environments where a single business decision—cutting staff, skipping maintenance, or ignoring safety standards—can change a child’s life forever.
If your family is currently sitting in a pediatric trauma ward in North America, or if you are at home watching your child struggle with a body cast or a developing brain injury, you likely feel a crushing weight of guilt and uncertainty. You signed a waiver. You thought it was a freak accident. You were told the park isn’t responsible. We are here to tell you that none of that is true.
What happened to your child wasn’t an accident; it was the predictable output of a system. At Attorney911, led by Ralph Manginello with over 25 years of experience in catastrophic injury and federal court litigation, we have spent decades making corporate defendants pay for putting margin ahead of safety. Whether the defendant is a multinational oil company or a private-equity-backed trampoline chain like Sky Zone, Urban Air, or Altitude, our approach is relentless. We don’t just handle your case; we treat your family like our own. As our client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.”
The North America Regulatory Vacuum: Why Your Safety Is Not Being Monitored
Across North America, there is a common misconception that trampoline parks are inspected and regulated like roller coasters or public pools. The truth is far more dangerous. There is no federal agency in the United States or Canada with direct jurisdiction over the daily operation of these facilities.
In the United States, the industry is largely self-regulated. The very standards that parks claim to meet, such as ASTM F2970-22, were actually drafted by the trampoline park industry itself. While the European standard EN ISO 23659:2022 is mandatory in much of the developed world, the U.S. still relies on a voluntary compliance floor that nearly 40 states have failed to even incorporate into their own safety codes.
Texas, where our firm is based, has no statewide trampoline park safety act. There is no mandatory injury reporting and no state-led inspection of the trampoline courts themselves. We see the resulting chaos in the numbers: a Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigation revealed 500 injury reports at just 21 trampoline parks in the DFW metro over a seven-year period. These are not isolated incidents; they are an industry-wide pattern of neglect.
The Physics of a Catastrophe: Why Trampolines Are Different
We often hear from parents who didn’t realize that a commercial trampoline park is fundamentally different from the one they grew up with in their backyard. The interconnected nature of commercial trampolines creates a phenomenon we call the “energy multiplier.”
The 4x Double-Bounce Physics
The most common mechanism of injury we litigate is the mass-ratio double-bounce. Imagine a 200-pound adult jumping on an adjacent bed to your 60-pound child. When the adult lands, the trampoline mat acts as a catapult for the child who is currently in their push-off phase. According to biomechanical research by Eager (2012), this can multiply the child’s launch force by up to 4x. The child isn’t just jumping; they are being thrown. This energy transfer is the primary cause of comminuted femoral shaft fractures and Salter-Harris growth plate injuries.
The Foam Pit Illusion
Fosos de espuma (foam pits) look soft and inviting. In reality, they are one of the most high-risk attractions in the park. The 2012 death of Ty Thomasson at SkyPark in Phoenix, Arizona, was a wake-up call the industry largely ignored. In that case, the foam pit was only 2 feet 8 inches deep—less than half of what safety experts recommend. When a jumper enters a pit head-first, the friction of the foam blocks applies an uneven force to the skull while the body’s momentum continues. This leads to cervical hyperflexion and axial compression, causing permanent paralysis or incomplete quadriplegia.
The industry knows how dangerous these pits are. That is why chains like Sky Zone, Urban Air, and DEFY have been transitioning to pressurized airbag landing pads. However, many parks still operate degraded, compacted foam pits because replacing the blocks is a capital expenditure they’d rather avoid.
The 5-Layer Stack: Pursuing the Deepest Pockets
When we file a lawsuit in North America, we don’t just sue the local business. The corporate architecture of the trampoline industry is designed to hide money from victims. We use our experience litigating against Fortune 500 giants like BP and Walmart to pierce these layers.
- The Operator LLC: This is the local business. They often carry a policy limit of $1M, which doesn’t cover a lifetime of care for a spinal cord injury.
- The Franchisee: A multi-unit holding company that may own several parks.
- The Franchisor: Entities like Sky Zone Franchising LLC or Urban Air Franchise Holdings. They mandate the training and the standards.
- The Corporate Parent: Sky Zone, Inc. (formerly known as CircusTrix LLC) is parented by Palladium Equity Partners. Urban Air is parented by Unleashed Brands, which was acquired by Seidler Equity Partners in 2023.
- The Component Manufacturer: The companies that built the defective nets, the unpadded walls, or the harness systems that failed (like Ropes Courses, Inc. in the Matthew Lu tragedy).
We access the franchisor’s umbrella and excess insurance layers, which can reach $25M to $100M. We don’t stop until we reach the money upstream.
The Waiver Is Noise, Not a Wall
The biggest hurdle for most parents is the piece of paper they signed at the front desk. “Can I sue if I signed the waiver?” is the first question we are asked. In North America, the answer is almost always YES.
Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, and our team include specialists like Lupe Peña, a former insurance defense attorney who used to write these very waivers. We know where the holes are.
- Gross Negligence Carve-Out: No state in the U.S. enforces a waiver for gross negligence. If the park knew a mat was torn (like in the $11.485M Cosmic Jump Harris County verdict) or that a foam pit was too shallow and did nothing, the waiver is void.
- Parental Indemnity for Minors: Landmark rulings in states across the country—Kirton v. Fields in Florida, Hojnowski in New Jersey, Munoz in Texas—have held that a parent cannot bind a minor child to a pre-injury waiver. Your child’s personal cause of action likely survives your signature.
- Bilingual Defeats (Delfingen): If your family’s primary language is Spanish and the park forced you to sign an English-only waiver on an iPad at a crowded kiosk, that waiver may be unenforceable due to procedural unconscionability. Hablamos Español directly to you—no interpreters, no delays.
PEDIATRIC INJURY: The Damage They Won’t Tell You About
A trampoline injury at age seven is not the same as one at age thirty-seven. Children’s bones are biomechanically distinct. They have growth plates (physes) that are made of cartilage.
If your child suffered a Salter-Harris Type II fracture of the distal tibia, you aren’t just looking at an ER bill. You are looking at a decade of orthopedic monitoring. If that growth plate was destroyed, the bone may grow crooked or stop growing entirely, eventually requiring corrective osteotomy or epiphysiodesis of the opposite leg.
Furthermore, we are the only firm with a direct medical-litigation bridge to trampoline-induced rhabdomyolysis. We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against a major university involving rhabdo and acute kidney failure. We know that a child jumping for 90 minutes in a hot, 85-degree park with no water protocol can arrive at the ER two days later in full kidney failure. We know the myoglobin cascade, and we know how to prove the park’s operational failures caused it.
The 48-Hour Evidence Protocol
The clock is ticking against you. Park surveillance DVRs are often set to overwrite in as little as 7 to 30 days. Incident reports get “revised” as soon as they reach corporate risk management.
When you retain us, our spoliation letter goes out within 24 hours. We demand the preservation of:
- Multi-angle surveillance footage (before it “glitches” like in the $3.5M Mathew Knight Georgia case).
- The raw metadata of the waiver signature.
- The attendant’s training file and shift-log history.
- Maintenance logs for the specific court.
We don’t rely on the park’s honesty. We use digital forensics (Cellebrite, Magnet AXIOM) to extract the truth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if I signed the waiver at the kiosk?
Yes. Texas and most North American jurisdictions do not allow waivers to shield parks from gross negligence or certain pediatric claims. The largest trampoline park verdict in history, $11.485 million in Harris County, was won despite a signed waiver.
How much is a trampoline park injury settlement worth?
Catastrophic cervical spine injuries (like the $15.6M Damion Collins award) often center on life-care plans between $10M and $25M. Pediatric fracture cases with growth plate involvement typically anchor in the $500K-$2M range depending on the long-term prognosis.
My child has dark urine after jumping—what does that mean?
This is a medical emergency. Dark “cola-colored” urine is a sign of myoglobinuria, which results from rhabdomyolysis. This muscle breakdown can shut down the kidneys. Go to an Emergency Room immediately and request a Creatine Kinase (CK) blood test and a renal panel. We are currently handling $10M litigation for this exact same pathology.
Who is responsible at a franchised park like Urban Air?
Both the local operator and the franchisor (UATP Management, LLC) can be held liable. The franchisor controls the training and brand standards, and under the apparent agency doctrine, they often carry the deepest pockets.
Why North America Chooses Attorney911
We have seen what happens when the “friendly adjuster” calls families to offer a $3,000 Med-Pay check as a “gesture of goodwill.” That check is a Trojan horse designed to close your multi-million-dollar file for pennies.
Ralph Manginello and the trial team at Attorney911 have gone head-to-head with international giants and won. We advance all costs—the biomechanical engineer, the life-care planner, the pediatric specialists. You pay nothing unless we recover money for you.
Your child’s future is decided by the steps you take this week. Don’t let the park’s corporate lawyers intimidate you with a piece of paper you signed while your kids were excited to play.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). Open 24/7. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win.
