In the heat of a Texas Saturday afternoon, thousands of families across Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio walk through the doors of facilities like Sky Zone, Urban Air, and Altitude. They are seeking an hour of active fun, often celebrating a birthday or a school milestone. But for many of these families, the visit ends not with cake and goody bags, but with the sound that Kati Hill, a mother of a three-year-old boy named Colton, still hears in her nightmares. As she told ABC News after her son’s femur was shattered at a trampoline park, it was “the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.”
At Attorney911, we have spent more than 25 years standing at the bedsides of families facing these exact moments. We know the terror of watching a surgeon explain what a Salter-Harris growth plate fracture means for a seven-year-old’s ability to walk properly in a decade. We know the frustration of the “friendly” phone call from an insurance adjuster who claims the waiver you signed on a park iPad ends your case before it begins. Most of all, we know the truth that the trampoline park industry spends millions to hide: these injuries are not “accidents.” They are the predictable output of business decisions that put profit margins ahead of child safety.
If your family is dealing with the aftermath of a trampoline injury in Texas, you are not just a client to us. As our client Chad Harris said, you are family. We bring federal court experience, a legacy of taking on Fortune 500 giants like BP, and a dedicated trampoline injury practice built to pierce the corporate shields these parks hide behind. We are the firm that knows the difference between a “freak accident” and a violation of ASTM F2970. We are the firm that knows that the waiver you signed is noise, not a wall.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in Texas
Texas families deserve the facts. The statistics typically cited by generalist law firms—often a decade old—don’t reflect the current danger. According to a landmark study by Teague et al., published in Pediatrics in January 2024, researchers tracked over 13,000 injuries across 8.4 million jumper-hours. They found that foam-pit injury rates sit at 1.91 per 1,000 jumpers, and “high-performance” jumping zones reach 2.11 per 1,000. In a busy Houston or DFW park hosting hundreds of kids a day, a significant injury isn’t a possibility—it is a statistical certainty.
In a state like Texas, where the Department of Insurance regulates the inflatable attractions (like Sky Riders or bungee tramps) but leaves the core trampoline decks entirely unregulated under Texas Occupations Code § 2151.002(1)(C)(iv), families are left in a regulatory vacuum. You are relying on the park’s own internal “safety standards”—standards they often write themselves and then ignore when the Saturday rush hits.
We have seen this play out in our own backyard. In Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million against the operator of Cosmic Jump after a 16-year-old fell through a torn trampoline slide onto a concrete floor. The jury found gross negligence despite a signed waiver. That verdict, which included $6 million in punitive damages, is the largest reported trampoline park award in U.S. history, and it happened right here in Houston. It proves that Texas juries will hold these corporations accountable when they choose to ignore known hazards.
Why the “One Jumper” Rule Fails in Texas Parks
The most frequent mechanism of injury we litigate is the “double-bounce.” This occurs when two jumpers of different weights are on the same trampoline bed. The physics are brutal. When a 200-pound adult lands on the mat while a 60-pound child is pushing off, the energy transfer multiplies the child’s launch force by up to four times. The child isn’t just jumping; they are being launched like a projectile with a velocity their developing musculoskeletal system cannot handle.
ASTM F2970—the safety standard written by the trampoline industry itself—requires parks to enforce age and weight separation. Walk into any Urban Air or DEFY in the DFW metro or Austin on a weekend and you will see 17-year-old court monitors, paid minimum wage and given only two to four hours of training, failing to enforce this rule. They are often on their phones or distracted by the chaos of twenty different birthday parties.
When that weight mismatch occurs, bones don’t just break; they shatter. We frequently see comminuted femoral shaft fractures and proximal tibial metaphyseal buckle fractures—known in the medical community as “trampoline fractures.” These aren’t simple breaks. They often involve the physis, or growth plate. Because pediatric bone is more pliable and ligaments are stronger than the bone itself, the force of a double-bounce transmits directly into the cartilage that controls future height and alignment.
If your child has suffered one of these injuries, you need an attorney who can quote ASTM F2970 from memory and who works with biomechanical engineers to reconstruct exactly how that energy transfer occurred. You need Ralph Manginello and the team at Attorney911.
Piercing the Five-Layer Corporate Shield
When you sue a brand like Sky Zone or Urban Air, you aren’t suing a single company. You are entering a maze designed by corporate lawyers to keep the money away from you. This is the “Five-Layer Stack” we pierce in every case:
- The Operator LLC: This is the specific business on the lease at your local Texas park. They are usually undercapitalized and hold a small insurance policy.
- The Franchisee: Often a multi-unit holding company that owns several locations.
- The Franchisor: Entities like Sky Zone Franchising LLC or UATP Management LLC (the Urban Air franchisor). They dictate the training and safety manuals but claim they have “no control” when someone gets hurt.
- The Corporate Parent: Sky Zone, Inc. (formerly CircusTrix LLC), backed by Palladium Equity Partners, or Unleashed Brands, acquired by Seidler Equity Partners in 2023.
- The Private Equity Sponsor: The deep pockets who approve the budget cuts that lead to understaffed courts and unmaintained foam pits.
Our firm was built to fight this architecture. Ralph Manginello litigated against BP after the Texas City refinery explosion—he knows how to handle multinational conglomerates and their fleets of lawyers. Our team includes Lupe Peña, a former insurance defense attorney who used to sit on the other side of the table. He knows exactly which waiver clauses Texas courts will void and which insurance layers the adjusters are trying to hide. He speaks Spanish natively and represents our Hispanic families directly—sin intérpretes.
If the park’s adjuster tells you the policy limit is “only $1 million,” do not believe them. That is the primary layer. Above it sits the umbrella, the excess, and the franchisor’s own insurance tower. We find every dollar.
Texas Waiver Law: Why You Can Still Sue
The first thing a park manager or an insurance adjuster will do is point to the “Participation Agreement” you signed on the iPad. They want you to believe that paper ends your rights. In Texas, they are wrong.
Under the landmark Dresser Industries v. Page Petroleum decision, Texas follows the “fair notice” doctrine. A waiver must be both conspicuously presented and use express negligence language. If the release was buried in 20 screens of text or didn’t explicitly use the word “negligence,” it may be unenforceable.
More importantly, the Texas 14th Court of Appeals ruled in Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. that a parent cannot waive a minor child’s personal injury claim in advance. While the 2025 Texas Supreme Court decision in Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air made it harder to avoid arbitration because of “delegation clauses,” it did not eliminate the park’s liability. Even in arbitration, the Damion Collins case recently resulted in a $15.6 million award against Urban Air because the arbitrator found a “systemic failure” to implement safety changes.
The waiver is noise. It is not a wall. We have the track record of attacking these documents on five different vectors, from gross negligence carve-outs to signer-authority challenges under the Texas Family Code.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries: Beyond the ER Bill
A trampoline injury to a child doesn’t end when the cast comes off. For a child whose growth plate is destroyed at age nine, the damages math is a decade-long calculation. This is why we deploy a Pediatric Life-Care Plan for our clients. We work with life-care planners and forensic economists to quantify:
- LIFETIME Specialty Care: The pediatric orthopedist visits, the hardware removals, and the possible corrective osteotomies (bone-straightening surgeries) that won’t happen until your child hits puberty.
- Lost Earning Capacity: We use experts to project what a child’s lifetime earnings loss looks like after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or spinal cord injury (SCI).
- Educational Accommodations: The special education aides and cognitive therapy required if a “mild” concussion leads to academic regression.
We also bridge the gap to rare but devastating conditions like Exertional Rhabdomyolysis. If your child has dark, cola-colored urine or rock-hard muscle pain 24 hours after jumping in a hot Texas park, they may be in acute kidney failure. We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving these exact same medical issues. We are the only firm with the established medical experts to prove a rhabdo case against a trampoline park.
48 Hours: The Evidence Clock is Ticking
Trampoline park evidence is engineered to disappear.
- Surveillance DVRs in most Texas parks overwrite in as little as 7 to 30 days.
- Incident Reports are often “revised” on park systems, with original drafts showing attendant negligence being deleted.
- Kiosk Waiver Databases purge version history on rolling 72-hour cycles.
If you wait two weeks to call a lawyer, the video of the adult catapulting your child off the court is gone. When you retain the Manginello Law Firm, our spoliation letter goes out by certified mail and email to the park and their corporate counsel within 24 hours. We use forensic tools like FTK Imager and Magnet AXIOM to pull metadata and access logs. We don’t just ask for the evidence; we secure the DVR and the database before they can be touched.
Why Choose Attorney911 for Your Texas Case?
Most personal injury firms handle a trampoline case like a fender-bender. They send a demand letter, take the first $50,000 offer, and move on. We don’t. We built our practice for the parents who refuse to let a corporation break their child and walk away.
- 25+ Years of courtroom experience: We’ve beaten the biggest names in the oil and gas, retail, and logistics industries.
- Defense-Side Insider Knowledge: Lupe Peña used to write the very arguments the parks are using against you. He knows where the holes are.
- No Fee Unless We Win: We advance every cost—the $10,000 biomechanical engineer, the $5,000 life-care planner, and the $8,000 pediatric specialists. You pay nothing until we recover money for you.
- Texas Offices, National Authority: From our Houston, Austin, and Beaumont bases, we handle cases across the state and the country.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). We are available 24/7. Whether your child was hurt at an Urban Air in Southlake, a Sky Zone in Frisco, or an Altitude in San Antonio, the case starts today.
Frequently Asked Questions About Texas Trampoline Injuries
Can I sue if I signed the paper waiver on the iPad?
Yes. Texas law is very specific about what a waiver must contain to be enforceable. Many park agreements fail the Dresser conspicuousness test. Furthermore, Texas courts have held that parents generally cannot waive the individual legal rights of their minor children. Even if the waiver is partially valid, it can never protect a park from “gross negligence”—a conscious disregard for safety that we prove by showing the park ignored its own manuals or prior similar injuries.
What should I do if the park manager refused to call 911?
This is a documented pattern. Parents have reported that some Texas Urban Air and Sky Zone managers are instructed to avoid calling 911 to prevent public attention and official reporting. If you were forced to call 911 yourself or transport your own child to the ER with a major injury, that is powerful evidence of the park’s reckless culture. Document the name of the manager who refused and call us immediately so we can subpoena the recorded internal radio or phone logs.
Are trampoline parks in Texas regulated by the state?
No. Texas is one of 39 states with zero state-level safety regulations for trampoline decks. While the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) oversees the bungee tramps and ziplines, the main jumping courts are unregulated. This means the park is responsible for its own safety rules. When they fail to follow the voluntary industry standard (ASTM F2970), they have breached their duty to keep your family safe.
How much can my child get for a broken femur?
A pediatric femur fracture is a life-altering event. Because of the risk of permanent limb-length discrepancy and the need for years of orthopedic monitoring, these cases often anchor in the $500,000 to $2,000,000 range. If the injury resulted from an adult double-bouncing a child—a known hazard the park failed to prevent—the recovery can reach much higher. National verdicts like the $11.485 million award in Harris County show that juries value these claims significantly.
Does it matter that we only speak Spanish?
It matters a great deal. Under the Delfingen doctrine in Texas, a waiver presented only in English to a parent who primary speaks Spanish may be voided by a court as a “procedural unconscionability.” The park cannot force you to sign a contract you couldn’t understand. Lupe Peña at our firm handles these bilingual cases directly, ensuring your family’s rights are protected in your own language.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit in Texas?
The standard statute of limitations for personal injury is two years. For minors, the clock is “tolled” until they turn 18, meaning they have until their 20th birthday. However, you should never wait. The evidence clock is much faster. Surveillance video, staff statements, and equipment maintenance logs can be destroyed or lost within months. We recommend filing or at least sending a preservation demand within the first week.
The Kill Shot: Your Child’s Recovery Can’t Wait
What happened at that Texas trampoline park wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable result of a corporation deciding that hiring fewer staff and skipping maintenance was worth the risk to your child’s health. They have a system for making you believe you have no options. We have a system for proving you do.
You signed the waiver because the line was long. You let them jump because you wanted them to have fun. None of that is your fault. The park collected your money, promised a safe environment, and failed. We are here to make them answer for that choice.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer every hour of every day. Hablamos Español. Your child’s recovery fund starts with this phone call.
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Trampoline-Park Waiver Deconstruction: What You Actually Signed
Every facility in Texas, from the Urban Air in Sugar Land to the Sky Zone in Frisco, uses a similar “Participation Agreement.” They are designed to frighten you. Let’s look at what the clauses actually say—and why they fail.
The “$100 Liability Cap”
Some parks, like Altitude, have included clauses in their terms purporting to cap all damages at “One Hundred U.S. Dollars.” In Texas, a $100 cap on a $5 million life-altering injury is the definition of “substantively unconscionable.” No court in our state is likely to honor a contract that says a child’s life is worth less than the price of a grocery trip.
The “Inherent Risk” Clause
The waiver says you accepted the “inherent risks of jumping.” We argue that a collapsed trampoline bed, a distracted 16-year-old monitor, and a foam pit that hasn’t been refilled in six months are NOT inherent risks. They are negligence. Our biomechanical experts prove the difference between an “awkward landing” and an “unsafe environment.”
The “Arbitration Delegation”
After the Cerna decision, parks are trying to move all cases to private arbitrators. While this changes the forum, it does not change the evidence. We have won multi-million dollar awards in arbitration. A private hearing room does not protect a negligent park from the facts—it just means you need a lawyer who knows the JAMS and AAA rules as well as the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.
The Signer-Authority Problem
At many Texas quinceañeras and birthday parties, an aunt, a grandmother, or a family friend signs the waiver for a group of kids. Texas Family Code § 153.073 is clear: only a parent or a court-appointed conservator has the authority to sign for a child. If anyone other than the legal guardian signed that iPad, the waiver hasn’t even been legally formed as to that child.
Medical Specificity: Why Your Diagnosis Matters
When we represent a family, we don’t just use the records the ER gives us. We build a medical chronology that speaks the language of specialist doctors.
- SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality): This is a pediatric phenomenon where a child lands on their head in a foam pit, their CT scan looks normal, but their spinal cord is suffering from ischemia. If the park staff or ER doctor told you “he’s fine” based on a normal X-ray while symptoms worsened, we investigate the delay in care.
- Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI): This is a severe form of TBI caused by the shearing forces of a collision or a fall onto concrete. It often doesn’t show up on a standard CT. We work with neurologists to order the susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) MRI that proves the damage to the brain’s white matter.
- Compartment Syndrome: If a broken tibia at a park leads to rock-hard swelling and extreme pain, it may be compartment syndrome. If a doctor doesn’t perform a fasciotomy within six hours, the muscle begins to die. We hold both the park and, if necessary, the medical providers accountable for these outcomes.
Behind the Scenes: The “Don’t Call 911” Policy
The single most disturbing industry practice we’ve uncovered is the discouragement of 911 calls. In Southlake, Texas, a parent’s review of Urban Air confirmed that management instructed teenagers to not call for emergency help. Why? Because a 911 call creates an immutable public record. It alerts the fire department. It alerts the media. It creates a CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch) log that we can FOIA.
By pressuring parents to “drive the child yourself” or accept a bag of ice, the park is buying time for the surveillance video to overwrite. We see right through this. If the park delayed your child’s care to protect their own reputation, that demonstrates the “conscious indifference” required for punitive damages in Texas.
Contact Lupe Peña Directly: Hablamos Español
Para nuestras familias tejanas que prefieren hablar en su propio idioma, Lupe Peña está aquí para ayudarles. Ella entiende que el proceso legal en los Estados Unidos puede ser intimidante, especialmente cuando una empresa grande le dice que usted firmó sus derechos. No es verdad.
- Sin costo inicial: No cobramos ni un centavo a menos que ganemos su caso.
- Confidencialidad: Sus preguntas sobre el estatus migratorio son privadas y protegidas por el privilegio abogado-cliente. Su derecho a proteger a su hijo no depende de su estatus.
- Conocimiento interno: Lupe sabe cómo piensan las aseguradoras porque ella trabajó para ellas. Ahora, ella usa ese conocimiento para conseguirle la máxima compensación a su familia.
Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911. No deje que el idioma sea una barrera para la justicia de su hijo.
Identifying the Texas “Red Flags”
If you are a parent considering a park visit, or looking back at the day of the injury, these are the signs of a park operating in gross negligence:
- Exposed Springs: If you can see the metal coils anywhere on the court, the padding is substandard.
- Mismatched Jumpers: If an adult is on the same bed as a toddler, and no monitor blowing a whistle intervenes, the park is gambling with lives.
- Compacted Foam: If the foam blocks are small, dirty, or compressed, they won’t absorb the fall.
- Phone-Distracted Monitors: A monitor looking at a screen isn’t looking at your child.
- No First Aid: If the park couldn’t provide a working AED or didn’t have a staff member who knew basic CPR, they failed the most basic duty of care.
Your Pathway to Recovery Starts Now
Attorney911 is not just another law firm. We are the firm that took on BP. We are the firm litigating the $10 million UH rhabdo case. We are the firm that knows exactly how to make your local Texas trampoline park pay for the damage they’ve caused.
Your child’s case is decided by what we preserve this week. The DVR is erasing. The witnesses are moving. The park is “updating” its files.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. 24/7. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win.
