One bounce. One bad landing. One broken neck. That’s all it takes for a Saturday afternoon at a Cedar Park trampoline park to transform into a lifetime of medical monitoring and forensic reconstruction.
At the Sky Zone on Scottsdale Drive or the Urban Air off Ranch Road 620, a seven-year-old child can come off a court on a stretcher while their parents are still finishing the birthday party pizza. We’ve seen this scene replay across Texas. We’ve spoken to the parents who signed a waiver at a kiosk twenty minutes earlier, only to be told by a manager that the park “isn’t responsible” for the shattered femur or the traumatic brain injury.
Kaitlin “Kati” Hill, a mother whose story was shared a quarter of a million times on Facebook, told ABC News about the moment her three-year-old son Colton’s knees buckled: “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.” Kati, like so many parents in Cedar Park, had no idea. She said, “We would have never put our baby boy on a trampoline if we would have known.”
We publish this guide because you deserve to know what the industry won’t tell you. Attorney911 is launching our dedicated trampoline injury practice from a foundation of 25+ years of catastrophic injury experience. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent over two decades holding Fortune 500 corporations accountable—from the BP Texas City refinery explosion to our current $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston for rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. We know how to move upstream through layered corporate structures, how to defeat “ironclad” waivers, and how to preserve evidence before it vanishes.
If your child was injured in Cedar Park, the evidence clock is already ticking. Park surveillance DVRs typically overwrite in as little as 7 to 30 days. Incident reports get “revised” or “lost.” We don’t wait. Our spoliation letters go out within 24 hours of your call.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win.
The Cedar Park Trampoline Environment: A Saturated Market
Cedar Park is a primary target for the “Adventure Park” pivot. We are no longer just dealing with trampoline gyms; we are dealing with Family Entertainment Centers (FECs) that bolt on go-karts, indoor coasters like the Sky Rider, ropes courses, and climbing walls. These facilities serve thousands of families every weekend across Williamson County, drawn from neighborhoods like Twin Creeks, Bella Vista, and Ranch at Brushy Creek.
The density of parks serving Cedar Park—Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude in Round Rock, and specialized training centers like Ninja Nation Austin—creates a margin-pressure environment. When throughput peaks, safety suffers. We look for the decision-makers behind the court: the managers who staff a Saturday shift with one seventeen-year-old “monitor” tasked with watching 60 jumpers.
Our team includes an attorney, Lupe Peña, who used to sit on the other side of the table. He spent years defending insurance companies and recreational businesses against exactly these kinds of claims. He knows the script the adjusters use when they call you 48 hours after an injury at an Urban Air. He understands which waiver clauses in Texas are airtight and which ones are full of holes. He speaks Spanish natively, representing our families directly without interpreters.
Why a Trampoline Injury is Never Just a “Freak Accident”
The trampoline park industry wants you to believe that a broken bone is an “inherent risk” of jumping. We don’t accept that. A trampoline injury is almost always the predictable output of a business decision that prioritized revenue over child safety.
ASTM F2970 is the standard for commercial trampoline courts. It wasn’t written by the government; it was written by the trampoline park industry itself. It establishes the “safety floor”—the minimum required attendant-to-jumper ratios, foam pit fill requirements, and age-separation rules. When a park violates F2970, they aren’t just being clumsy. They’re violating the rules they wrote for themselves.
We pair every ASTM F2970 reference with EN ISO 23659:2022, the international standard published in November 2022. While Europe and Australia mandate strict, non-negotiable safety requirements, the United States remains a voluntary regime. Sky Zone, Urban Air, and Altitude operate at a level that most of the developed world treats as a danger.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has been warning against recreational trampoline use since 1999, these injuries are entirely foreseeable. A recent study published in Pediatrics in January 2024 (Teague et al.) tracked 13,256 injuries and found that foam pits carry an injury rate of 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours. If the park in Cedar Park hosts 500 kids a day, the math says someone is getting hurt nearly every single day.
The Physics of the Catapult: Double-Bounce Energy Transfer
You’ve seen it happen. A 200-pound adult lands on a trampoline mat just as an 80-pound child is pushing off. In that millisecond, kinetic energy transfers through the bed. The child doesn’t just jump; they are launched.
The physics here are documented: energy transfer can multiply a child’s launch force by up to 4x. The child becomes a projectile traveling at a velocity their developing musculoskeletal system cannot decelerate. This is the mechanism behind the “trampoline fracture”—the proximal tibial metaphysis buckle fracture that we see in children under six.
ASTM F2970 requires parks to operationalize age and weight separation specifically to prevent this “catapult” effect. When the court monitors at a Cedar Park facility ignore a father jumping with his toddler, the park has chosen to ignore the physics of orthopedic destruction.
The Foam Pit Illusion
Foam pits at Cedar Park venues look soft, but they’re often the site of the most catastrophic outcomes.
The mechanism is identical to a shallow-diving accident. If the foam blocks have compressed over time (compaction), or if the pit depth doesn’t meet the ASTM required fill height, a jumper who enters head-first or feet-first strikes the hard concrete floor beneath.
We cite the Ty Thomasson case from Phoenix as the industry’s warning. Ty died in 2012 after jumping into a foam pit that was only 2 feet, 8 inches deep rather than the recommended 6 feet. His mother, Maureen Kerley, fought to pass “Ty’s Law,” making Arizona the first state to regulate this industry. In Texas, we have no such law. We rely on the Cosmic Jump $11.485 million verdict in Harris County as our anchor. In that case, a 16-year-old fell through a tear in a trampoline slide onto concrete below. The jury found gross negligence despite a signed waiver.
We currently litigate a $10 million lawsuit involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure—the same muscle-and-organ breakdown that occurs in children who jump continuously for 90 minutes in a hot Cedar Park indoor facility without proper hydration. We know the medicine, we know the experts, and we know how to make institutional defendants pay.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 tonight.
Who is Really Responsible? Piercing the 5-Layer Stack
When we say “we’re suing Sky Zone,” what we actually mean is that we’re identifying the multiple layers of a corporate shield. The park has a system for denying claims; we have a system for winning them.
- The Operator LLC: The specific local entity on the lease in Cedar Park. Usually undercapitalized.
- The Franchisee: The owner of multiple locations across Central Texas.
- The Franchisor: Sky Zone Franchising LLC or Urban Air Franchise Holdings. They dictate the “Brand Standards” that were violated.
- The Parent Company: Sky Zone, Inc. (f/k/a CircusTrix LLC; backed by Palladium Equity Partners since 2018) or Unleashed Brands (parent of Urban Air, acquired by Seidler Equity Partners in 2023).
- The Manufacturer: The vendor who supplied the defective mat, the non-compliant foam, or the unclipped harness.
In the Damion Collins v. Urban Air Overland Park case, an arbitrator awarded $15.6 million for a quadriplegia injury. The arbitrator, Thomas Bender, held the waiver was unenforceable because there was a “SYSTEMIC FAILURE” to bring safety information to the patron. Crucially, the franchisor (UATP Management LLC) was held responsible for 40% of the award.
We apply that same franchisor-on-the-hook model to every Cedar Park case. We’ve litigated against BP, Walmart, Amazon, and FedEx. The private equity sponsors behind these jump parks don’t bring anything Ralph Manginello hasn’t beaten before in federal court.
The Waiver is Noise—Not a Wall
The insurance adjuster’s first move is always “The Waiver Wave.” They want you to believe that a signature on an iPad iPad ends your case before it starts. It doesn’t.
Under Texas law, specifically the Dresser v. Page Petroleum fair-notice doctrine, a waiver must be conspicuous and use the express word “negligence” to be enforceable for ordinary slip-and-falls. But for serious injuries, the attack vectors are even stronger:
- Gross Negligence: Texas courts—and juries—refuse to enforce waivers where the injury resulted from a conscious indifference to safety. Conscious disregard of ASTM F2970 is gross negligence.
- The Munoz Rule: In Texas, the landmark case Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. establishes that a parent generally cannot bind a minor child’s personal tort claim to a pre-injury waiver. Your child’s right to recover survives your signature.
- Signer Authority: Was the waiver signed by an older sibling? An aunt? A teacher? Texas Family Code § 153.073 says only a legal guardian can bind a child. A non-guardian signature destroys the waiver’s footing.
- The Delfingen Attack: If the waiver was English-only and your family’s primary language is Spanish, the contract may fail on formation grounds. Lupe Peña uses the Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela doctrine to invalidate these documents daily.
That piece of paper you signed at the front desk was drafted by corporate lawyers who knew it was full of holes. They count on you not knowing that. We reopen the files the insurance companies try to close.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries: The Medical Reality
A “broken leg” at a Cedar Park trampoline park is rarely just a broken leg. Because children’s bones are still growing, a fracture often involves the growth plate (physis).
Salter-Harris Fractures and Growth Arrest
We represent families whose children have suffered Salter-Harris Type II and Type III fractures. These are injuries that extend through the growth plate. If the bone doesn’t heal with perfect alignment—or if the growth plate is destroyed—the bone may stop growing entirely or grow at an angle.
The damages math here doesn’t stop at the ER bill. A child with a growth plate injury at age nine may require a decade of orthopedic monitoring, multiple corrective osteotomies, and face a lifetime of gait discrepancy. We work with pediatric orthopedic surgeons and life-care planners to calculate the true 50-year cost of these “accidents.”
SCIWORA and Cervical Cord Infarction
Children’s spines are ligamentous and flexible. They can suffer SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality). This means the cord is damaged even when the bones look normal on a CT scan.
We see this frequently in head-first foam pit landings. It’s the Elle Yona mechanism: a vertebral artery dissection where the blood vessel to the spinal cord tears. It is often initially misdiagnosed as a panic attack, while the spinal cord is actually suffering an infarction (stroke). If your teen was told they were just “scared” or “hyperventilating” after a failed backflip, you need a second opinion immediately and a lawyer who understands the pathology.
Exertional Rhabdomyolysis
If your child has dark-brown “cola-colored” urine, severe muscle pain, and vomiting 24 to 48 hours after jumping at a park in Cedar Park, they may be in acute kidney failure.
Exertional rhabdo happens when muscle cells rupture and spill myoglobin into the blood. The kidneys crash under the load. We are the only firm in Texas with an active medical-litigation architecture for rhabdo, anchored by our $10 million UH case. We know exactly which labs to pull—CK levels, creatinine, and urine myoglobin—to prove the park’s heat and exertion protocols were negligent.
Hablamos Español. Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911.
The Staffing Gap: Who is Watching Your Child?
The person responsible for keeping your child alive at an Urban Air or Sky Zone is, on average, a 17-year-old making $12 an hour with four hours of training.
We subpoena the training records of every attendant on duty. We look for:
- IATP Court Monitor Certification: A $25 course that less than half of U.S. parks make their staff take.
- L&I Violations: Like the $68,000 Tukwila Sky Zone fine or the $22,000 Vancouver citation for overworking teenagers and allowing minor employees to fix equipment without fall protection.
- The “Don’t Call 911” Protocol: Documented in reviews from Southlake to Miami—management instructing staff to downplay injuries and avoid calling EMS to keep the 911 logs “clean.”
If a park won’t follow labor laws for its own teenage staff, why would you trust them with the safety of yours?
48-Hour Evidence Preservation: The Only Window That Matters
Your child’s case will be decided by what gets preserved this week.
We deploy a digital forensic examiner to image the park’s DVR storage media before the 72-hour or 7-day overwrite cycle begins. We capture the kiosk waiver version history through the Wayback Machine and FRE 902(14) hash-verified captures. We find the former employees—the attendants who quit two weeks after the incident—through LinkedIn alumni searches and Indeed reviews.
The park’s risk-management team is working to protect the park before the ambulance leaves the parking lot. You need a team working for your child.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consulting is free. Zero upfront costs.
Frequently Asked Questions in Cedar Park
Can I sue if I signed the electronic waiver at the kiosk?
Yes. Electronic signatures must comply with the Federal E-SIGN Act and Texas UETA. System glitches, timeouts, and unauthenticated user IDs often make these signatures void. More importantly, no waiver in Texas can release a park from gross negligence or bind a minor child’s personal tort claim. As the Cosmic Jump verdict proved, a signed paper is not a shield against corporate recklessness.
Should I take my kid to a trampoline park at all?
The AAP says no, especially for children under six. If you go, you are an “invitee” under Texas premises liability law. The park owes you the highest duty of care to inspect and fix hazards. If you see torn mats or monitors on their phones—leave. If your child is hurt, the decision to let them jump was your parenting choice; the decision to run an unsafe facility was the park’s negligence. Our focus is on the park.
They wouldn’t call 911 after my son was hurt—is that legal?
It’s a documented industry pattern. Multiple Tripadvisor reviews for Urban Air locations allege employees were instructed by management to NOT call 911. We treat this as evidence of gross negligence. A park that prioritizes its public injury record over a child’s medical emergency is a park with punitive damages exposure.
How much is my child’s case worth?
Catastrophic pediatric injuries—SCI, TBI, or permanent growth arrest—require life-care planning. National industry data for these injuries anchors in the $5M to $25M range. Even a “simple” femur fracture with growth plate involvement typically settles between $500K and $2M. Every case is unique, but we don’t settle until we’ve accounted for every year of your child’s adult life.
Is my homeowner’s or health insurance going to cover this?
Most homeowners’ policies in Cedar Park EXCLUDE trampoline injuries. Your health insurance may cover treatment, but they will place a lien on your recovery to get their money back. A lawsuit is how you recover the millions of dollars in future nursing care, home modifications, and lost earning capacity that health insurance never touches.
What if I didn’t actually sign—my friend’s parent did on a birthday trip?
This is a standard waiver-defeat vector. Under Tex. Fam. Code § 153.073, only a parent or court-appointed conservator can bind a minor. If the “friend’s mom” signed for your kid, that signature is a legal nullity. The park has zero waiver defense against you.
What should I do right now?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Preserve the receipts for any sugary drinks your child had (to prove they weren’t given water). Take photos of the body cast. Record your child’s memory of the accident on your phone while it’s fresh. Do not post on social media; the park’s insurer is already watching.
Why Choose Us? The Moat Statement
Most personal injury firms in Austin handle a trampoline case like a slip-and-fall. We don’t. We built our practice around exactly this fight.
Ralph Manginello brings 25 years of courtroom experience and a record against Fortune 500 defendants. Lupe Peña knows the insurer’s script because he helped write it. Our 50-state database of waiver enforceability and our active $10M rhabdo litigation give us a medical and structural edge no one else can replicate.
We represent families. We represent children. We represent the parent sitting in a Dell Children’s waiting room right now, wondering how their life changed in a single second.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Hablamos Español.
No fee unless we win.
72-Hour Evidence Checklist for Parents
- Photographs: Wide shots of the attraction plus close-ups of any torn padding or gaps.
- Names: The monitor on duty and the shift manager.
- Video: Confirmation from the manager that surveillance recorded the incident.
- Signage: Photos of the “No Double-Bouncing” or “No Flips” rules the monitors ignored.
- Medical: Requesting a CK test in the ER if there’s any fatigue or vomiting.
- Legal: Sending the spoliation letter via Attorney911 within 24 hours.
The park has a risk team. So do you.
1-888-ATTY-911.
Attorney911 / The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC
Houston · Austin · Beaumont
Toll-Free: 1-888-288-9911
https://attorney911.com
What happened to your child at an Urban Air or Sky Zone 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 industry themselves to establish a safety floor, and the park operated below that floor to hit a margin target. The waiver was drafted by lawyers who knew it wouldn’t hold in most states. The surveillance is engineered to overwrite before families have a lawyer. We were built for exactly this fight.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The preservation starts now.
