One bounce. One bad landing. One broken neck. That is all it takes at a trampoline park.
Imagine a Saturday afternoon in the Town of Lakeside. Maybe your family decided to beat the North Texas heat by driving over to the Urban Air in North Fort Worth or the Altitude in Fort Worth Keller. The court is packed. It’s a birthday party gauntlet, the same one we see every weekend across Tarrant County. The music is loud, the “Glow Night” lights are dimming, and the court monitor—a seventeen-year-old hired three weeks ago—is looking at his phone.
Then it happens. A heavier jumper lands on the same trampoline bed as your child. Your child is launched into the air by a force four times greater than they can control. They hit the mat, their knees buckle, and you hear it—what mother Kati Hill described to ABC News as “the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.”
By the time the EMS unit from the Town of Lakeside makes the run to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, the park’s risk management team is already at work. They aren’t working to help your child; they are working to protect the corporate parent. They are hoping you believe the waiver you tapped “I Agree” on at the kiosk ended your case before it began.
We are here to tell you that the waiver is NOT a wall. It is noise. 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 waiver was signed. The jury found gross negligence anyway.
Our firm, led by Ralph Manginello with over 25 years of experience, was built for this fight. We have gone toe-to-toe with Fortune 500 corporations like BP, Walmart, and Amazon. We understand the five-layer corporate stack intended to shield the deep pockets of private-equity owners like Palladium Equity (Sky Zone) and Seidler Equity (Urban Air). Most importantly, we have an attorney on our team, Lupe Peña, who used to represent these very insurance companies. He knows their playbook because he helped write it. Now, he uses that insider knowledge to dismantle it for families in the Town of Lakeside.
If your child was injured at a trampoline park, call 1-888-ATTY-911 immediately. Surveillance video in Tarrant County parks is often overwritten in as little as 7 to 30 days. We send our spoliation letters within 24 hours of being retained to freeze that evidence in place.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in Tarrant County
The Town of Lakeside sits in one of the most saturated trampoline park markets in the world. With Urban Air headquartered in Grapevine and Altitude Trampoline Park based in Fort Worth, our backyard is the ground zero for the industry’s expansion. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram documented nearly 500 injury reports at 21 area trampoline parks over a seven-year period. These aren’t just “freak accidents”; they are the predictable output of a business model that puts margin ahead of your child’s safety.
According to a study published in Pediatrics by Teague et al. in January 2024, foam pit injuries occur at a rate of 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours. Nationally, trampolines send over 300,000 Americans to the ER every year. Up to 1.6% of all pediatric emergency department trauma is now trampoline-related, according to the American Journal of Roentgenology.
In the Town of Lakeside, your family deserves more than a lawyer who “handles personal injury.” You need a team that can cite ASTM F2970 from memory and point to the exact second the park violated the industry’s own safety floor.
What Actually Happened: The Mechanics of Negligence
Trampoline parks use marketing to convince you their facilities are “Safe Family Fun.” The law, and the physics, tell a different story. Every injury we see in the Town of Lakeside usually traces back to one of three failures.
The Double-Bounce Catapult (ASTM F2970 Violation)
The most common mechanism of catastrophic injury is the double-bounce. When a 200-pound adult lands on a trampoline bed while a 60-pound child is pushing off, the kinetic energy transfer multiplies the child’s launch force by up to 4x. The child isn’t jumping; they are being catasulted.
ASTM F2970—the standard the trampoline industry wrote for itself—requires parks to operationalize age and weight separation. When a park in the Town of Lakeside allows a “Toddler Time” to mix with open jump, or fails to enforce a one-jumper-per-bed rule, they are choosing to ignore the physics that shatter pediatric bones.
The Foam Pit Myth (EN ISO 23659:2022)
Foam pits look soft, but they are often shallow graves. If the foam blocks aren’t rotated or replaced regularly, they compact. A child jumping from a platform into a compacted pit hits the concrete floor beneath with the same velocity as a fall to the sidewalk. This axial loading is the primary cause of cervical spine injuries and SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality).
In Europe, the EN ISO 23659:2022 standard mandates specific maintenance for these pits. In Texas, we have no such state law. The Texas Legislature had two bills in the 88th session that would have regulated these parks; both died in committee. In the Town of Lakeside, your only protection is the civil justice system holding these operators accountable for ignoring the international safety ceiling.
The Staffing Gap: Who Was Watching Your Child?
The person responsible for your child’s life at a facility near the Town of Lakeside is typically a 16-to-19-year-old making near minimum wage. Training in this industry is often as little as 2 to 4 hours. The turnover rate is 130% to 150%.
When we depose a “court monitor,” we often find they were never taught how to recognize a developing double-bounce or how to invoke a concussion protocol. This staffing gap isn’t an accident—it’s a margin decision. Large chains backed by private equity sponsors like Palladium Equity Partners approve these cost-cutting measures to maximize system-wide sales, which topped $642 million in 2024 for Sky Zone, Inc.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Our team includes a former insurance defense attorney who knows exactly which training logs were faked and which incident reports were “revised” after the fact.
Who Is Really Responsible? Piercing the Corporate Stack
If your child was hurt at a chain like Sky Zone, Urban Air, or DEFY, the person you talk to at the front desk in Tarrant County will tell you they are just a “small local business.” This is the first layer of the defense shell game.
We identify every layer of the defendant stack:
- The Operator LLC: The local entity in North Fort Worth or Keller.
- The Franchisee: The multi-unit owner who likely owns five or ten other parks.
- The Franchisor: UATP Management, LLC (Urban Air) or Sky Zone Franchising, LLC.
- The Corporate Parent: Unleashed Brands or Sky Zone, Inc. (formerly CircusTrix).
- The Private Equity Sponsor: The money behind the curtain—Seidler Equity or Palladium Equity.
Most firms stop at the local LLC and their $1 million policy. We go upstream. In the Damion Collins v. Urban Air case, a Kansas arbitrator awarded $15.6 million for a quadriplegia injury, and the franchisor—UATP Management—was held responsible for 40% of that award. Arbitrator Thomas Bender found a “systemic failure” to implement safety changes. That is the same systemic failure we look for in the Town of Lakeside.
Why the Waiver Doesn’t End Your Case in Texas
You signed a waiver on an iPad. You checked a box that said you released the park from all liability, including their own negligence. If you are in the Town of Lakeside, you need to know three things about Texas waiver law:
1. Direct-Benefits Estoppel and Signer Authority
Under Texas Family Code § 153.073, only a parent or court-appointed conservator can sign for a minor. If Grandma or the birthday party host signed for your child at an Urban Air in Tarrant County, the waiver is often void on arrival. Even if you signed, the Texas case of Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. (1993) established that a parent cannot pre-emptively waive a minor’s personal injury claim. While the recent 2025 ruling in Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air has made individual arbitration more likely in Texas, the substantive right for the child to recover remains.
2. The Dresser “Fair Notice” Doctrine
Texas law requires that a release of future negligence be “conspicuous.” Under Dresser Industries v. Page Petroleum, the release must use the specific word “negligence” and must be so bold or large that a reasonable person would notice it. Most kiosk waivers buried in twenty screens of click-through text fail this test.
3. The Gross Negligence Carve-Out
No waiver in Texas can release a company for gross negligence. If a park in the Town of Lakeside knew a trampoline was torn—like in the $11 million Menchaca case—and let children jump on it anyway, the waiver is legally irrelevant. We specialize in finding the “actual knowledge” that defeats these paper shields.
Ralph Manginello and our associate attorney Lupe Peña have scrutinized thousands of these agreements. We know where the holes are because one of us used to sit on the other side of the table defending them. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. No fee unless we win.
The Medical Reality: Pediatric Injuries Are Different
In the Town of Lakeside, a “broken leg” is rarely just a broken leg. Because children’s bones are still developing, they suffer from Salter-Harris fractures—injuries to the growth plate (physis).
A Salter-Harris injury at age eight can produce a limb-length discrepancy that doesn’t manifest until age fourteen. If your lawyer doesn’t understand the long-term orthopedic monitoring a child needs, they will settle your case for the value of the ER bill and leave your child’s future on the table.
The Rhabdomyolysis Bridge
We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against a major university involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. This is the exact same pathophysiology we see in children who jump for ninety minutes in a hot, poorly-ventilated Tarrant County park without water.
If your child has dark-colored urine or rock-hard muscle pain 24 hours after a visit to a park near the Town of Lakeside, go to the Cook Children’s ER immediately. Then call us. We are the only North Texas firm with a current $10 million medical-litigation architecture already built for rhabdo cases.
SCIWORA: The Silent Danger
Children in the Town of Lakeside are uniquely vulnerable to SCIWORA—Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality. A child can suffer a permanent spinal cord injury even if the initial CT scan in the ER looks normal. The pediatric spine is flexible; the cord can be stretched and damaged while the bones snap back into place. Any child with neck pain after a trampoline accident needs an MRI with T2-weighted sequences. Do not let the park’s adjuster minimize your child’s symptoms.
48-Hour Evidence Preservation: The Clock Is Ticking
If your child was injured today in the Town of Lakeside, the most important evidence is already disappearing.
- Surveillance DVRs: Most parks in North Fort Worth and Keller use rolling DVR systems that overwrite footage every 7 to 30 days.
- Waiver Metadata: Kiosk databases can purge session data on 72-hour cycles.
- The Incident Report: Parks often “revise” the report after the insurance adjuster reviews it.
Our firm doesn’t wait for a lawsuit to start gathering evidence. We use the Wayback Machine to capture the park’s website rules before they are changed. We retain biomechanical engineers to model the energy transfer of the double-bounce that launched your child. We retain forensic digital examiners to image the DVR before the footage is lost.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. Our associate Lupe Peña speaks with you directly—no interpreters, no delays.
Frequently Asked Questions for Lakeside Parents
Can I sue if the other child caused the injury?
Yes. In the Town of Lakeside, trampoline parks have a non-delegable duty to supervise. They cannot outsource safety to a seven-year-old. If a larger child double-bounced yours, the park failed to enforce age and weight separation rules mandated by ASTM F2970.
The park told us not to call 911. Is that legal?
While not a crime, a “Do Not Call 911” policy is evidence of gross negligence. At the Urban Air in Southlake, a parent documented that staff were specifically instructed not to call EMS for serious injuries. This is a common industry tactic to downplay injuries and prevent a public record of the accident.
What if we signed the waiver on an iPad?
Electronic signatures must comply with the Texas UETA and Federal E-SIGN Act. If the system glitched, timed out, or used an unauthenticated user ID, the waiver may be void. We subpoena the kiosk audit logs to find these formation failures.
How much is my child’s case worth?
In Texas, damages for a catastrophic pediatric injury can exceed $5 million to $15 million. We build a Pediatric Life-Care Plan that forecasts sixty years of medical monitoring, corrective surgeries for growth-plate damage, and lost future earning capacity. We don’t settle for the hospital bill; we settle for the child’s entire future.
We don’t have health insurance. How can we afford a lawyer?
You pay nothing unless we win. We advance all investigation costs—the pediatric orthopedic consultant, the ASTM specialist, the life-care planner. We also help Lakeside families find medical providers who work on “letters of protection,” meaning they treat your child now and get paid from the settlement later.
Why Lakeside Families Choose Attorney911
Most personal injury firms treat a trampoline case like a slip-and-fall. They haven’t litigated rhabdomyolysis. They haven’t fought BP. They don’t know that the Town of Lakeside sits in a jurisdiction where Urban Air and Altitude corporate presence creates a unique discovery opportunity.
As client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.” We represent the parent at the trauma-bay bedside watching a surgeon explain what happens when a growth plate is destroyed at age nine. We have recovered multi-million dollar settlements for traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries.
The parent conglomerate behind your local park—whether it’s Sky Zone, Inc. backed by Palladium or Unleashed Brands backed by Seidler—has a fleet of corporate lawyers. You need equal power.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña habla con usted directamente.
No fee unless we win. We advance every expense.
What happened to your child wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable output of a system. The clock for preserving the truth starts now.
Call us today. 1-888-288-9911.
