When a family in Lakewood Village decides to spend a Saturday afternoon at a nearby trampoline park in Frisco, Denton, or Lewisville, they aren’t looking for a legal battle. They’re looking for a birthday party reward, a way to burn off energy during a hot Texas summer, or a safe place for their children to practice gymnastics. They trust that the facility is operated by professionals who follow safety standards. They trust that the “Toddler Time” sessions are actually safe for toddlers. And they trust that the multi-page waiver they clicked through at a digital kiosk is just a standard formality.
But as our firm has seen for over 25 years, that trust is often misplaced. What happened to Colton, the three-year-old son of Kaitlin “Kati” Hill, is a nightmare that stays with every parent who hears it. As Kati told ABC News, the moment Colton hit the mat on a court where a larger jumper was also active, his knees buckled and he let out “the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.” Colton suffered a broken femur and spent weeks in a body cast. His mother’s warning, shared over 240,000 times, echoes the reality we face every day at Attorney911: “We had no idea. We would have never put our baby boy on a trampoline if we had known.”
At The Manginello Law Firm, we represent families in Lakewood Village and throughout North Texas who are picking up the pieces after a catastrophic trampoline injury. We are not a general practice firm that happens to take a few personal injury cases. Our founding partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent over two decades litigating against major corporate entities, from the BP Texas City refinery explosion to companies like Amazon, UPS, and Walmart. We bring federal court experience to these cases because the parent conglomerates behind chains like Sky Zone, Urban Air, and Altitude — specifically private equity-backed firms like Palladium Equity Partners and Seidler Equity Partners — hire the same high-priced defense firms that multinational oil companies do.
We are entering a new era of trampoline-related trauma. According to the American Journal of Roentgenology (2024), up to 1.6% of all pediatric emergency department trauma visits in the United States are now related to trampolines. Whether it is a double-bounce collision at a Frisco park or a failed net on a backyard Springfree or Jumpking trampoline in a Lakewood Village neighborhood, the physics of these injuries is devastating. When you are standing at a hospital bed in a Level 1 pediatric trauma center like Children’s Medical Center Dallas or Cook Children’s in Fort Worth, you don’t need an attorney who and “handles accidents.” You need a team that has memorized ASTM F2970, who knows why the park’s surveillance “glitched” at the moment of impact, and who has an associate attorney like Lupe Peña who used to defend these exact recreational businesses and knows how to tear their waivers apart.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in Lakewood Village
Lakewood Village is a community that values active lifestyles. Living near Lake Lewisville means our children are outdoors, in youth sports, and often on backyard trampolines. However, the prevalence of these devices in our backyards and the saturation of indoor jump parks along the I-35E and Dallas North Tollway corridors creates a persistent risk of catastrophic orthopedic and neurological injury.
The problem isn’t just “bouncing.” The problem is the energy. A trampoline mat is a kinetic energy storage device. When a 200-pound adult lands on a bed at the same time a 60-pound child from Lakewood Village is pushing off, that energy doesn’t just dissipate. It transfers. Physics dictates that the lighter jumper is launched with a force multiplied by up to four times their own momentum. The child isn’t jumping; they are being catapulted.
This is why the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has advised against recreational trampoline use since 1999. In their updated 2012 and 2019 policy statements, the AAP was clear: most injuries occur on the mat itself, not from falling off, which means that even the most expensive safety netting on a backyard Skywalker or ACON trampoline cannot prevent the most common catastrophic outcomes.
Why Lakewood Village Families Need an Expert Advocate
If your child was injured at a facility like Urban Air or Sky Zone, the park’s management likely handed you a clipboard instead of calling 911. They may have pointed to the waiver you signed and told you that you have no right to sue. In Texas, we know that is a lie designed to save their insurance company money.
In Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million — including $6 million in punitive damages — against the operator of Cosmic Jump after a teenager fell through a torn trampoline slide onto concrete. The park argued there was a signed waiver. The jury found gross negligence anyway. That verdict, the largest reported against a commercial trampoline park in the U.S., was possible because the family had a legal team that knew how to prove the park had actual knowledge of a defect and chose to ignore it for the sake of profit.
At Attorney911, we are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. Why does this matter for your trampoline case? Because we see the same “rhabdo” pathology in children who jump for two hours straight in an overheated indoor park in North Texas. We know the medicine, we know the nephrology experts, and we know how to hold institutional defendants accountable when their margin-seeking decisions lead to a child’s organ failure.
Learn more about documenting catastrophic injuries in our video guide: “The Ultimate Guide to Brain Injury Lawsuits” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBYAHi5aiEQ.
The “One Jumper” Rule and the 14x Risk Ratio
When we investigate cases for Lakewood Village clients, the most common violation we find is a breach of the “one jumper per bed” rule. ASTM F2970, the standard written by the trampoline industry itself, requires parks to separate jumpers by size and age. Yet, walk into any park on a Saturday afternoon and you will see age-mixing everywhere.
Medical literature, including the Nysted and Drogset study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, confirms that when a smaller child jumping with a larger person is injured, they are 14 times more likely to suffer a fracture than the heavier person. The industry knows this. The managers at these parks know this. But on a busy weekend, enforcing these ratios requires more staff — and staff costs money.
Understanding the Standard of Care: ASTM F2970 vs. F381
There is a massive gap in how trampoline safety is perceived by parents and how it is practiced by corporations. We hold defendants to two primary standards:
- ASTM F2970 (Commercial Courts): This governs every Urban Air, Altitude, and Sky Zone. It sets the floor for attendant-to-jumper ratios, foam pit depth, and inspection logs. While 39 states treat this as voluntary, we use it as the definitive proof of the “duty of care” the park owed to your child.
- ASTM F381 (Backyard Trampolines): This governs manufacturers like Jumpking and Skywalker. It bars children under six from using the equipment. If a manufacturer sold a trampoline to a Lakewood Village family without making this warning conspicuous, they are liable for the result.
Most personal injury firms can’t tell you what a “metaphyseal buckle fracture” is or why a “Salter-Harris Type II” fracture in a seven-year-old requires 10 years of orthopedic monitoring. We can. We know that if a child’s growth plate is destroyed at age nine, the damages aren’t just an ER bill — they are a lifetime of corrective surgeries and lost earning capacity.
If you are dealing with an insurance adjuster who is trying to minimize your child’s pain, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. We speak their language, and more importantly, we have one of their former attorneys on our team. Lupe Peña knows exactly which waiver clauses hold up in Texas and which ones are full of holes.
The Five-Layer Defendant Stack
When we sue a chain like Sky Zone or Urban Air, we don’t just sue the local LLC. We pursue the entire corporate stack. This is the only way to reach the deep-pocketed insurance layers that a catastrophic injury requires.
- Layer 1: The Operator LLC. The single-location entity that often has a low-limit policy.
- Layer 2: The Franchisee. The multi-unit group that owns several parks.
- Layer 3: The Franchisor. The brand owner (e.g., Sky Zone Franchising LLC or UATP Management LLC) that mandates safety standards.
- Layer 4: The Parent Corporation. Sky Zone, Inc. (f/k/a CircusTrix) or Unleashed Brands.
- Layer 5: The Private Equity Sponsor. Firms like Palladium Equity which have backed these chains since 2018.
By day 10, the Saturday afternoon your child was hurt in is often gone from the park’s DVR storage. By day 30, the attendant on duty may have moved to a different facility. This is why our spoliation letter — a legal demand to freeze the evidence — goes out within 24 hours of you hiring us. We don’t wait for them to “lose” the video.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. Our firm is built to fight for families in Lakewood Village who have had their lives changed in one bounce.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries: Beyond the Emergency Room
In Lakewood Village, we see many families whose children are elite athletes. When a trampoline accident occurs, it doesn’t just cause pain; it steals a future. A “broken leg” is often a comminuted femoral shaft fracture requiring ORIF (open reduction internal fixation) with intramedullary nailing.
We focus on the most severe injury categories:
1. Spinal Cord Infarction and Vertebral Artery Dissection
The Elle Yona case, which went viral on TikTok with over 27 million views, brought national attention to the risk of “spinal cord stroke.” In Miami, a teen doing backflips into a foam pit experienced sudden back pain that was initially misdiagnosed as a panic attack. In reality, her vertebral artery had dissected, leading to a stroke in her spinal cord and C4 incomplete quadriplegia. This mechanism is frequently missed by ER doctors in North Texas, but we know to look for it.
2. SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality)
This is a predominantly pediatric phenomenon. A child’s spine is more flexible than an adult’s. This means the spinal cord can be stretched and damaged even when the X-ray or CT scan shows no broken bones. If a park employee or an ER doctor in Denton or Lewisville told you your child was “fine” because the scan was negative, but the child still has numbness or weakness, they may have missed a permanent cord injury.
3. Salter-Harris Growth Plate Fractures
Because children’s bones are still developing, they break through the growth plate (physis). A Salter-Harris Type IV or V crush injury to the physis at age eight may not show its true damage until the child hits a growth spurt at age 13. If one leg stops growing while the other continues, the resulting limb-length discrepancy can require a decade of painful surgeries. We build pediatric life-care plans that project these costs over 50 years, not just 50 days.
Our firm advanced the expert biomechanist and the pediatric orthopedic consultant in cases where others saw only a simple fracture. We currently litigate a $10 million lawsuit involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure — we know how to document the absolute most complex medical conditions.
The Waiver Is Not a Wall: The Texas Strategy
The most frequent question we hear from families in Lakewood Village is: “I signed the waiver, so I can’t sue, right?”
Actually, in Texas, that is rarely true for a minor. Under the landmark case Munoz v. II Jaz, Inc. (1993), Texas courts have consistently held that a parent cannot bind a minor child to a pre-injury waiver of their personal injury claims. Your signature might affect YOUR right to sue for the medical bills you paid, but it does not extinguish your CHILD’S right to be made whole for their lifetime of suffering.
Furthermore, we attack the formation of these waivers. If you are a Spanish-speaking family in Lakewood Village, the Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela doctrine allows us to challenge waivers that were presented only in English without a translation or an opportunity to understand. If the person who signed the waiver wasn’t the legal guardian — such as a grandmother or an aunt at a birthday party — Texas Family Code § 153.073 says they had no authority to sign.
We’ve gone head-to-head with corporations like BP, Amazon, and Walmart. The PE sponsors behind Urban Air and Sky Zone don’t intimidate us. We know their playbook because we helped write the one they use.
What to Do in the First 48 Hours After an Accident
Your child’s case is decided by what gets preserved this week. If you are reading this and your child was recently injured near Lakewood Village, follow these steps immediately:
- Stop all communication with the park. Do not accept their “goodwill” offers. As many Tripadvisor reviewers have noted (including at Urban Air Southlake), staff are often instructed by management to downplay injuries and minimize the need for 911.
- Preserve the Grip Socks. Yes, the socks. The “traction” they provide is often cited in defense arguments. We need to see the condition they were in.
- Screenshot the Kiosk. Use your phone to record the process of navigating the waiver screens at that park if you can. We look for “inadequate conspicuousness” — is the legal warning hidden in a tiny box that you have to scroll through in three seconds?
- Do not post on social media. Every “recovery update” on Facebook or Instagram will be subpoenaed by the park’s defense team to prove your child “isn’t that hurt.”
- Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We send our spoliation letter to the park, the franchisee, and the corporate franchisor within 24 hours. This demand requires them to save the video, the incident report, and the maintenance logs.
Learn more in our video guide: “I’ve Had an Accident — What Should I Do First?” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCox4Lq7zBM.
The Hidden Danger of Foam Pits
Parks like Sky Zone and Urban Air often market foam pits as the “softest landing in the world.” But biomechanics research, such as Eager’s 2012 work, proves that foam pits are one of the most dangerous areas in any park.
If the foam blocks aren’t “fluffed” and rotated regularly, they compact. A pit that looks full from the observation deck may only have four inches of actual impact protection at the bottom before a child hits the concrete or wood subfloor. This is exactly what caused $3 million paralysis settlement in the Seitz case and the Ty Thomasson death in Phoenix. The industry is moving toward airbags because they are safer, but many parks near Lakewood Village still use foam pits to save on capital expenses.
Why Staff Training Fails Our Children
The person watching your child at a jump park is likely a 17-year-old making minimum wage with less than four hours of safety training. Washington Labor & Industries cited Sky Zone Tukwila for $68,000 in 2025 for serious safety and labor violations, and Sky Zone Vancouver was cited in 2024. This is a pattern of choosing throughput over people.
When we depose the “court monitor” in your case, we often find they weren’t even looking at the court. They were on their phone, or they were busy checking the wristbands of a new group. ASTM F2970 requires a specific attendant-to-jumper ratio. When that ratio is breached, the waiver fails, and the park’s liability begins.
Frequently Asked Questions for Lakewood Village Parents
Can I sue if I signed the waiver?
Yes. Texas courts void parental waivers for minors, and no waiver in the country protects a park from gross negligence. If the park failed to maintain its equipment or follow its own safety manual, the waiver is just a piece of paper.
How much is my child’s case worth?
Catastrophic outcomes like TBI or spinal cord injury can range from $5 million to $25 million in total life-care costs. Even a severe growth-plate fracture can settle in the $500,000 to $2 million range because of the long-term surgical needs. We calculate every dime.
They said it was a “freak accident.” Does that mean they aren’t liable?
“Freak accident” is the phrase the insurance adjuster uses to avoid responsibility. In truth, over 300,000 trampoline ER visits happen every year. There is nothing “freak” about an injury that is documented in every pediatric orthopedic textbook. If it was foreseeable, they are liable.
Who pays my child’s medical bills while the case is moving?
Your health insurance usually pays initially, but they will want to be reimbursed at the end of the case. We help negotiate those liens down so that more of the settlement stays in your child’s recovery fund.
The park’s insurance company offered us $5,000 for “Med-Pay.” Should we take it?
No. This is a “Med-Pay Trojan Horse.” Often, the fine print on that check or the signature required to get it releases the park from all future claims. Never deposit a check from the park’s insurer without a lawyer reading it first.
Contact Attorney911 Today
We are based in Houston, but we are Lakewood Village’s heavy-hitters. We have recovered multi-million dollar settlements for traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury victims — the same categories a trampoline park or defective residential trampoline can cause in a single bad landing.
You pay nothing unless we win. We advance every expense — the expert biomechanist, the pediatric orthopedic consultant, the ASTM compliance specialist. Your child’s recovery fund stays intact.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 now. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña habla con usted directamente — sin intérpretes.
What happened to your child at City of Lakewood Village wasn’t an accident — it was the predictable output of a system. The AAP has been warning since 1999. ASTM F2970 was written by the trampoline industry itself to establish a safety floor. The park operated below that floor to hit a margin target. The waiver was drafted by corporate counsel who knew it wouldn’t hold in most states. The surveillance is engineered to overwrite before most families have a lawyer. We were built for exactly this fight.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The case starts today.
