“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 Kaitlin Hill describing the moment her three-year-old son, Colton, suffered a broken femur at a trampoline park. Her warning, shared hundreds of thousands of times across the country, is the reality that families in Caps live with every weekend.
When your child is hurt at a trampoline facility or on a neighbor’s backyard equipment in Caps, the silence that follows the initial shock is often the loudest. But for us at Attorney911, that silence is the sound of a system that failed. We are not just personal injury lawyers; we are a specialized practice group led by Ralph Manginello, who brings over 25 years of federal and state trial experience to every case we open. We represent families in Caps and across San Saba County who have been told by a park manager or an insurance adjuster that a signed piece of paper ends their right to recovery. It doesn’t.
We know the industry standards, we know the corporate architecture, and we know the medicine that governs these catastrophic events. Whether it is a double-bounce collision at a major chain like Urban Air or Sky Zone, or a growth-plate injury from a defective Jumpking or Skywalker trampoline in a Caps backyard, we built this firm to stand between families and the corporate conglomerates that put margin ahead of safety.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in Caps and San Saba County
Every weekend, dozens of families from Caps travel to the larger metros—Abilene, Austin, or San Angelo—to visit commercial trampoline centers. They go for birthday parties, “Toddler Time,” or simply to burn off energy. They walk past the warning signs, tap “Agree” on an English-only iPad kiosk, and hand their children a wristband that acts as an insurance policy for the park operator.
But what the industry doesn’t tell you is that according to the latest research in the journal Pediatrics (Teague et al., 2024), the injury rate for high-performance jumping is as high as 2.11 per 1,000 jumper-hours. Nationally, more than 300,000 trampoline-related emergency room visits happen every year. Many of these involve residents of Caps who arrive at local San Saba County medical facilities or are transferred to Level 1 pediatric trauma centers like Cook Children’s in Fort Worth or Dell Children’s in Austin.
In Texas, we have seen the results of this industry’s expansion firsthand. 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 mat onto concrete. That is the largest reported jury verdict against a US commercial trampoline park, and it happened right here in our home state. Whether the injury happened at an Urban Air in a nearby metro or a family gathering in Caps, the legal architecture we use is the same. We have gone toe-to-toe with Fortune 500 corporations like BP, Walmart, and Amazon, and we treat the parent conglomerates behind DEFY, Rockin’ Jump, and Altitude with the same relentless pursuit of accountability.
Why a Signed Waiver Does Not End Your Case in Caps
The most common hurdle families in Caps face is the believe that signing a waiver at the front desk was a total surrender of their rights. This is exactly what the park’s risk management team wants you to believe. They use a tactic called “The Waiver Wave”—opening every conversation with the mention of the release form to discourage you from seeking counsel.
Our team includes an attorney, Lupe Peña, who used to sit on the other side of the table. He spent years defending recreational businesses and insurance companies against these exact claims. He knows which waiver clauses carry water in Texas and which ones are full of holes. For families in Caps, there are three primary ways we dismantle these waivers:
- The Minor Child Rule (Munoz v. II Jaz): In Texas, long-standing case law holds that a parent cannot bind a minor child to a pre-injury waiver of the child’s own personal injury claim. Even if you signed the iPad, your child’s right to seek compensation for their injuries survives.
- Gross Negligence Carve-Out: Texas law, following the landmark Moriel decision, does not permit the release of claims involving gross negligence—conduct that shows an extreme degree of risk and conscious indifference. If a park in a metro serving Caps knew its foam pit was too shallow or its mats were torn and operated anyway, the waiver fails.
- Bilingual Formation Issues: Under the Delfingen doctrine, if your family speaks Spanish as a primary language and the park in or near Caps forced you to sign an English-only waiver without translation or explanation, we attack the very formation of the contract.
The Physics of Failure: How These Accidents Happen
Most trampoline injuries in Caps are not “freak accidents.” They are the predictable outputs of physics and business decisions.
The Double-Bounce Catapult
The most common mechanism is the “double-bounce.” In an environment where a 200-pound adult and a 60-pound child from Caps are on the same interconnected trampoline court, the energy transfer is lethal. When the heavier jumper lands while the lighter jumper is pushing off, the launch force for the child multiplies by up to 4x. This is how femurs snap. This is how growth plates are destroyed. ASTM F2970, the industry’s own safety standard, requires parks to separate jumpers by size, yet on a crowded Saturday afternoon near Caps, this rule is the first to be ignored.
Foam Pit “Softness” is a Myth
Many parents in Caps believe foam pits are the safest part of the park. Biomechanically, they can be the most dangerous. If the foam cubes are compressed or the pit is shallow—violating ASTM depth requirements—a head-first entry results in axial loading of the spine. We look for patterns like the one in the Ty Thomasson case, where a shallow foam pit led to five broken vertebrae. The industry is currently pivoting toward airbags, which is a silent admission that the foam pits they have used for years were unsafe.
Harness and Attraction Failures
At FECs (Family Entertainment Centers) near Caps, we see injuries on Sky Riders, climbing walls, and ninja courses. The Matthew Lu case in Gastonia, where a boy fell 20 feet because an attendant failed to secure a harness, resulted in a wrongful death suit where the park publicly admitted “human error.” We subpoena training logs and shift schedules for any Caps-area victim to prove that the “court monitor” watching your child was likely an undertrained 17-year-old making minimum wage.
Catastrophic Injuries: The Medical Stakes for Caps Families
A trampoline injury is rarely just a “broken bone.” For a developing child in Caps, the consequences span decades.
- Salter-Harris Growth Plate Fractures: These fractures occur through the cartilage of the growth plate. If not managed by a pediatric orthopedic specialist, they can lead to limb-length discrepancy or crooked growth that doesn’t manifest until your child hits a growth spurt years later.
- TBI and Concussions: A head strike on a frame, a wall, or another jumper can cause a traumatic brain injury. We follow the 2024 AJR pictorial radiographic essay “Pediatric Trampoline Injuries Head to Toe,” which documents the specific imaging signatures of these injuries in developing brains.
- SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality): This is a pediatric-specific danger. A child from Caps may land on their head, have a “normal” CT scan at a local hospital, but still suffer a spinal cord injury because their ligamentous spine stretched further than the cord could handle.
- Exertional Rhabdomyolysis: This is a condition our firm knows intimately through our active $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston. When a child in Caps jumps for 90 minutes in a hot, under-ventilated facility without proper hydration, their muscles can literally break down, releasing myoglobin that causes acute kidney failure. If your child has “cola-colored” urine or listlessness 24 hours after a park visit, it is a medical emergency.
Who is Accountable for an Injury in Caps?
We don’t just sue the local venue. We perform what we call “Corporate Structure Archaeology” to find where the money and the decision-making power actually live.
- The Operator LLC: The local business in the metro serving Caps.
- The Franchisee: The multi-unit owner who may be cutting costs on training and maintenance.
- The Franchisor: Entities like Sky Zone Franchising LLC or Urban Air Franchise Holdings who dictate the rules but claim “no control” when someone gets hurt. We use the Damion Collins $15.6 million arbitration award as a precedent—where the franchisor was held 40% liable despite typical licensing defenses.
- The Parent Conglomerate: Sky Zone, Inc. (renamed from CircusTrix) or Unleashed Brands, often backed by deep-pocketed private equity firms like Palladium or Seidler Equity.
- The Equipment Manufacturer: For backyard cases in Caps involving Jumpking, Skywalker, or Bouncepro, we look for manufacturing defects in the frame welds or UV-degraded netting that fails ASTM F381 standards.
The 48-Hour Evidence Race in Caps and San Saba County
If you are reading this and your child was just hurt, the clock is running against you. Trampoline park surveillance systems in the metros surrounding Caps are typically set to overwrite in as little as 7 to 30 days. The waiver kiosk database may purge version history every 72 hours. Incident reports are frequently “revised” by management after you leave the parking lot.
We send formal spoliation letters by certified mail within 24 hours of being hired. We demand the preservation of:
- Native DVR footage from every angle.
- Computer metadata showing every edit to the incident report.
- The training files of the court monitor on duty.
- The daily inspection logs showing if that court was Checked “safe” that morning.
We don’t wait for a lawsuit to start investigative work. We use forensic tools to capture the park’s website and waiver flows before they are updated to retrofit safety warnings after your child’s accident. For backyard cases in Caps, we secure the equipment itself, ensuring that a rusted spring or a failed weld is not “cleaned up” before our biomechanical engineers can inspect it.
Why Choose Us for a Caps Trampoline Case?
Most personal injury firms handle a trampoline case like a standard slip-and-fall. We don’t. We treat it like the high-stakes corporate accountability case it is.
Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent over two decades litigating against major industrial and corporate defendants. We take the same discipline used in BP refinery litigation and apply it to a Sky Zone or Urban Air case. We understand the “Policy Limit Shell Game” adjusters play. When they say “the policy is only $1 million,” we go looking for the umbrella layers, the franchisor’s additional-insured coverage, and the parent company’s excess tower.
As client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.” We treat families in Caps with that level of care. We advance every expense—the expensive expert testimony from pediatric neurosurgeons, the life-care planners who calculate your child’s 70-year medical needs, and the economists who quantify lost earning capacity. You pay us nothing unless we recover for you.
Frequently Asked Questions for Caps Families
Can I sue if I signed the waiver at a park near Caps?
Yes. In Texas, a parent’s signature on a pre-injury waiver is generally unenforceable against a minor child’s personal injury claim (Munoz v. II Jaz). Furthermore, waivers cannot release a facility from gross negligence or reckless conduct. If the park failed to follow ASTM F2970 safety standards, the waiver is not a shield.
How much is my child’s trampoline case worth?
Every case is unique, but catastrophic pediatric spinal injuries or TBIs can result in multi-million dollar settlements. We look at the “hidden damages” others miss—lifetime special education costs, future corrective surgeries for growth-plate damage, and the pediatric brain development multiplier. For example, the Cosmic Jump verdict in Houston reached over $11 million because of the severity of the TBI and the park’s gross negligence.
What if my child was hurt on a neighbor’s trampoline in Caps?
This often falls under the “Attractive Nuisance” doctrine. Property owners have a duty to secure items like trampolines that are foreseeable lures for children. Even if your child was a guest or wandered over, homeowners’ insurance—or their umbrella policy—may provide coverage, provided there isn’t a specific trampoline exclusion.
They said my child “jumped wrong.” Does that mean I don’t have a case?
Trampoline parks often try to blame the victim, especially children. However, under Texas comparative negligence law, your child is still entitled to recovery unless they are found to be more than 50% at fault. More importantly, children under age 7 are often legally presumed incapable of negligence, and for older children, the park’s failure to supervise typically outweighs any split-second “wrong jump” by a minor.
How long does the evidence stay available at the park?
Surveillance video is typically overwritten in 7 to 30 days. This makes it critical for residents of Caps to engage an attorney immediately. Once we send a spoliation letter, the park has a legal duty to freeze that footage. If they delete it after notice, we seek “adverse inference” instructions, telling the jury to assume the video would have proven the park was at fault.
Is rhabdomyolysis common after a trampoline park visit?
It is a growing concern. If your child jumped for a long duration in a hot facility serving Caps and developed dark urine or intense muscle pain, they need an immediate CK blood test at the ER. We are currently litigating a $10 million rhabdo case against a major university and apply that exact medical expertise to trampoline park exertion injuries.
Do I have to pay anything upfront?
No. At Attorney911, we operate on a 100% contingency fee basis. We advance all the costs of the experts and investigation. If we don’t win your case, you owe us absolutely nothing. Your child’s recovery fund stays intact while we fight the corporate lawyers.
Contact Us Today for a Free Consultation
Your child’s future is decided by the steps you take this week. The park has already reported the incident to their risk management team and their insurance carrier. Their lawyers are already looking for ways to use the waiver against you and searching your social media for any “proof” that your child isn’t hurt.
You need a team in your corner that can quote ASTM F2970 from memory and point to multi-million dollar results in similar catastrophic cases. We serve the Caps community and the surrounding San Saba County area with pride, professionalism, and a fighter’s mentality.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 or (888) 288-9911. We are available 24/7 to answer your questions. Hablamos Español. Our associate attorney Lupe Peña speaks with you directly—no interpreters, no delays.
Whether the injury was a femur fracture, a growth-plate disruption, or a permanent spinal cord injury, your family deserves justice. Let us show you why the waiver is just paper, and why we are the firm built for this fight.
Technical Appendix: Standards and Statutes for San Saba County Cases
ASTM F2970: The Commercial Standard
The commercial trampoline park industry wrote ASTM F2970 as a voluntary safety floor. It dictates everything from the depth of foam pits to the ratio of attendants to jumpers. When we depose a park manager, we don’t ask “were you safe?” We ask “how many inches of foam fill were in pit 4 on the morning of June 12th?” and “why does your log show zero rotation of blocks for three months?”
ASTM F381: The Residential Standard
For backyard injuries in Caps, we turn to ASTM F381. This standard governs the components, assembly, and labeling of consumer trampolines. If a weld failed on a Jumpking or a net tore on a Skywalker, we measure that failure against F381. If the manufacturer knew of a defect and failed to report it to the CPSC, we pursue punitive claims.
Texas Statute of Limitations for Caps Residents
In Texas, the personal injury statute of limitations is two years. For injuries to children in Caps, the clock is “tolled” (paused) until their 18th birthday, meaning they have until age 20 to file. However, waiting is the enemy of evidence. The “evidence statute” is measured in days, not years. Call us before the DVR overwrites.
The Lone Star Moat: Why We Win in Texas
We are a Texas-based firm. We know the local courts and juries that serve San Saba County. We understand the Texas “fair notice” doctrine that often voids waivers that aren’t bold, all-caps, and conspicuous. Most importantly, we know that when a jury in a county like Harris sees a corporation like Cosmic Jump knowingly ignoring a tear in a mat, they will return a verdict that sends a message to the entire industry.
Final Kill-Shot: The Next 24 Hours
What happened at the park or in the backyard wasn’t an accident. The AAP has been warning parents about the dangers of trampolines since 1999. The industry ignored those warnings and built a $1 billion business model on top of them. They counted on the fact that most parents in Caps would sign the waiver and walk away after an injury.
We don’t walk away. We have spent 25 years making deep-pocketed defendants pay for the shortcuts they take. We currently litigate an active $10 million lawsuit for rhabdo and acute kidney failure, utilizing the same medical experts required for trampoline crush injuries. Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña are ready to take your call.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The investigation starts now. No fee unless we win.
