“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.”
Those were the words of Kati Hill after her three-year-old son, Colton, suffered a broken femur at a trampoline park. That scream is the sound we hear in every case we take. For parents in Cut and Shoot, that sound is the beginning of a nightmare that the trampoline industry helps create and then tries to hide behind a piece of paper.
At Attorney911, we represent the families of Cut and Shoot who have been forced to watch their children in trauma bays, explaining to surgeons how a Saturday afternoon at a jump park ended in a catastrophic fracture or a traumatic brain injury. We are not just a law firm that handles personal injury; we are a dedicated catastrophic-injury practice led by managing partner Ralph Manginello, who brings over 25 years of courtroom experience to every case. We know exactly what the billion-dollar conglomerates behind Sky Zone, Urban Air, and Altitude do the moment an ambulance pulls into the parking lot in Montgomery County. They start building a defense. We start building a case that wins.
If your child was hurt at a trampoline park serving Cut and Shoot or on a backyard trampoline in a neighborhood nearby, you are currently the target of an insurance-defense playbook. They want you focused on the waiver you signed. We want you focused on the evidence they are trying to overwrite.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in Cut and Shoot and Montgomery County
The City of Cut and Shoot is a community built on family values and youth sports. We see the backyard trampolines in every other yard along Highway 105 and the FM roads. We see the families packing their cars to head to the Urban Air in The Woodlands (Shenandoah) or the Altitude Trampoline Park in Spring-Klein. For these families, a trampoline park is marketed as “safe family fun.”
The data tells a different story. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) NEISS database, trampolines send approximately 300,000 Americans to the emergency room every year. A staggering 1.6% of all pediatric emergency department trauma visits are now trampoline-related, according to the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR 2024). In a market like Cut and Shoot, those aren’t just numbers; they are our neighbors.
The most current pediatric medical research, published in Pediatrics by Teague et al. in January 2024, tracked over 13,000 injuries. The research found that foam-pit injury rates are roughly 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours, and high-performance jumping rates are even higher at 2.11 per 1,000. When you take your child to a park near Cut and Shoot, they are entering a high-velocity environment where 11% of all injuries are classified as “significant.”
Most parents in Cut and Shoot believe that if a park is open, it must be regulated. This is the first and most dangerous lie of the trampoline industry. There is no federal agency that inspects these facilities. In Texas, the regulatory gap is even wider. While the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) regulates Class B inflatable rides under the Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151—things like the bungee trampolines and “Sky Rider” coasters you see in parks—the main trampoline decks themselves are statutorily excluded. This means the very activity that causes the most harm in the Cut and Shoot area is effectively unregulated by the State of Texas.
One Bad Landing: The Mechanics of Trampoline Trauma
To understand why your child was hurt in Cut and Shoot, you have to understand the physics that the park operators choose to ignore.
The Double-Bounce: A Physics Catastrophe
The most common mechanism of injury we see in Montgomery County is the double-bounce. This happens when a heavier jumper—often an adult or an older teen—lands on the mat at the exact moment a smaller child is pushing off. The energy from the larger person’s landing is transferred through the trampoline bed, multiplying the child’s launch force by up to 4x.
The child isn’t jumping anymore; they are being launched by a catapult. The lighter jumper is 14 times more likely to be injured than the heavier one in these scenarios. ASTM F2970, the industry’s own safety standard, requires one jumper per bed and age/weight separation. Yet, at parks serving Cut and Shoot on a Saturday afternoon, attendants often ignore these rules to maintain throughput.
The Foam Pit Illusion
Foam pits look soft, but for many children in Cut and Shoot, they are traps. If a child enters head-first or feet-first and the foam cubes have not been rotated, replaced, or filled to the required 42-inch fill depth, they strike the hard floor beneath. This is the mechanism responsible for cervical spinal cord injuries and vertebral compression fractures.
Leading researchers like Eager (2012) have documented that foam pits apply non-uniform friction to the head, causing it to wedge while the rest of the body continues downward. This results in SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality)—a pediatric phenomenon where a child can suffer a permanent cord injury even if their initial CT scan at a Houston-area trauma center looks “normal.”
Advanced Skills and Stroke Risks
In June 2024, a young woman named Elle Yona became a viral caution after her backflip into a foam pit caused a vertebral artery dissection—a spinal-cord stroke that resulted in C4 incomplete quadriplegia. More than 27 million people have watched her story. The industry knows these risks; they classify flips as “Advanced Skills” that should only be performed in designated zones under instructor supervision. But walk into any park near Cut and Shoot today, and you will see children attempting these same maneuvers on unmonitored courts.
The Waiver is Noise, Not a Wall
The first thing the park manager or an insurance adjuster will tell a parent in Cut and Shoot is: “You signed a waiver.” They want you to believe that signature ended your child’s rights. They are wrong.
Our firm’s associate attorney, Lupe Peña, brings a unique advantage to our clients in Cut and Shoot. Lupe used to represent the insurance companies and recreational businesses. He literally knows which waiver clauses are designed as “paper shields” and which ones have holes in them. In Texas, the law is clear: a waiver is only enforceable if it meets the “Fair Notice” doctrine established in Dresser Industries, Inc. v. Page Petroleum, Inc. (1993). This requires the document to be conspicuous and to use the exact word “negligence.”
More importantly, for parents in Cut and Shoot, the case of Munoz v. II Jaz, Inc. (1993) remains binding law: a parent in Texas cannot waive a minor child’s personal injury cause of action. Your signature may bar your own claims for medical bills, but it does NOT bar your child’s right to recover for their pain, suffering, and permanent impairment.
In Harris County, a few miles south of Cut and Shoot, a jury awarded $11.485 million against the operator of Cosmic Jump after 16-year-old Max Menchaca fell through a torn trampoline mat onto concrete. The jury found gross negligence—a conscious indifference to a known risk—and the signed waiver could not stop them from holding the park accountable.
If your family’s primary language is Spanish, and you were handed an English-only iPad at a park near Cut and Shoot with instructions to “sign quickly so the kids can play,” the waiver may also be void under the Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela doctrine. We take these waiver-attack vectors and dismantle the defense before they ever reach a courtroom.
The 5-Layer Defendant Stack: Who Pays in Cut and Shoot?
When a child is catastrophically injured in Cut and Shoot, the medical bills alone can exceed $1 million in the first year. The local park’s primary insurance policy is often just the floor. We go upstream to the money.
- The Operator LLC: The immediate business running the park in Montgomery County.
- The Franchisee: The multi-unit owner that may own several trampoline parks across Southeast Texas.
- The Franchisor: Corporate entities like Sky Zone Franchising LLC or Urban Air Franchise Holdings. They mandate the training and safety standards that were likely violated.
- The Corporate Parent: Sky Zone, Inc. (formerly CircusTrix LLC), owned by Palladium Equity Partners; or Unleashed Brands, the parent of Urban Air, recently acquired by Seidler Equity Partners.
- The Manufacturer: Companies like Jumpking, Skywalker, or UA Attractions, LLC. Many of these products have documented CPSC recall histories, including the 2005 Jumpking recall of 1 million units for breaking welds.
We’ve litigated against Fortune 500 giants like BP, Walmart, Amazon, and FedEx. The PE-backed parents of national trampoline chains don’t intimidate us. We know how to find the umbrella and excess insurance layers that provide the recovery a child in Cut and Shoot will need for the rest of their life.
Evidence Preservation: The 7-Day Clock
The case for your child in Cut and Shoot is being decided right now by what gets preserved. Most trampoline park DVR systems in Montgomery County are set to overwrite footage in as little as 7 to 30 days. Incident reports are frequently “revised” in the days following an injury, and even the waiver kiosk database can purge version history on a 72-hour rolling cycle.
Our spoliation letter is a paralegal-grade scaffold that goes out within 24 hours of your retention. We demand the preservation of:
- Multi-angle surveillance video from 24 hours before to 7 days after.
- The original, unedited incident report with metadata tracking every revision.
- Attendant shift logs and time-clock data to prove understaffing.
- The actual trampoline mat, springs, or harness involved in the failure.
Every minute the park delays a 911 call or minimizes an injury to a parent in Cut and Shoot is a minute they are using to let evidence vanish. We stop that cycle immediately.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries and Lifetime Damages
A trampoline injury at an early age in Cut and Shoot is a biological event that lasts for decades. We don’t just see a “broken bone.” We see a Salter-Harris fracture—a break through the growth plate. If the growth plate at the end of a child’s tibia is destroyed at age nine, that leg may not grow straight or at the same pace for the next decade.
We consult with pediatric orthopedic surgeons and life-care planners to calculate the true cost of these injuries for Cut and Shoot families:
- Medical Costs: Surgeries through skeletal maturity, hardware removal, and potential corrective osteotomies.
- Earning Capacity: Research shows even mild TBI in developing brains can reduce adult earning potential by millions.
- Non-Economic Damages: The loss of the ability to play high school football, the PTSD that follows a traumatic fall, and the daily physical pain.
We currently litigate a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure—the exact same muscle and organ breakdown we see in children who spend a hot afternoon jumping for two hours at a park near Cut and Shoot without proper hydration breaks. We know the medicine, we know the experts, and we know how to quantify a child’s life.
Why Cut and Shoot Families Choose Attorney911
We represent families. We represent the parent who had no idea how dangerous these parks were until they heard that scream. As our client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT a pest to them and you are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.”
We handle cases in Cut and Shoot and nationwide on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing unless we win. We advance all investigation costs—retaining the biomechanical engineers and ASTM compliance specialists needed to prove that the park’s choice to cut staffing caused your child’s injury.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free consultation. Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions for Cut and Shoot Parents
What should I do if my child got hurt at a trampoline park in Cut and Shoot?
First, seek medical care at a Level 1 pediatric trauma center like Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. Second, do not sign any forms provided by the park, even if they offer to pay your copay. This is often a “Med-Pay” trap that includes a hidden total release. Third, call a lawyer immediately to preserve the surveillance video before it is overwritten.
Can I sue if I signed a waiver at a park near Cut and Shoot?
Yes. In Texas, waivers do not cover gross negligence, and under the Munoz case, a parent cannot waive a child’s independent right to sue for personal injuries. Additionally, many waivers fail the Texas “conspicuousness” legal requirement.
How much money can my family get for a trampoline injury settlement in Montgomery County?
Recovery depends on the severity of the injury. National anchors for catastrophic spinal injuries range from $5M to $25M+. Serious fractures with growth-plate damage typically anchor in the $500K to $2M range. We evaluate each case based on a lifetime care plan.
How long do I have to sue a trampoline park in Texas?
The standard personal injury statute of limitations in Texas is two years. However, for injuries to a minor, the clock is tolled until they turn 18, meaning they have until age 20. Do not wait for this deadline; the evidence (surveillance video) disappears in weeks, not years.
What is a “double bounce” and why is it dangerous for Cut and Shoot kids?
A double bounce is when the rebound energy from a larger person is transferred to a smaller child through the trampoline mat. It can launch a child with 4x the force of a normal jump, which children’s developing bones cannot safely absorb upon landing. It is a direct violation of ASTM F2970 safety standards.
Is my child’s headache after a trampoline accident normal?
No. Persistent headaches after an impact can be a sign of a concussion or a more serious Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). In young children, brain injuries may not manifest fully for several months. Always seek a neurological evaluation after a significant trampoline fall.
What if my child has dark urine after jumping for hours?
This is a medical emergency. Dark, cola-colored urine is a classic sign of rhabdomyolysis—muscle tissue breakdown that can lead to acute kidney failure. Go to an ER immediately and ask for a CK (Creatine Kinase) blood test. We are currently litigating a $10M rhabdo case and can help you navigate this complex medical claim.
Who pays for a backyard trampoline injury in Cut and Shoot?
We look at three layers of liability: the homeowner’s premises liability, the manufacturer’s product liability (if the net or frame failed), and the retailer’s liability (such as Walmart for Bouncepro models). Even if a homeowner’s policy excludes trampolines, an umbrella policy or a product-defect claim against the manufacturer may provide recovery.
La Guía Completa para Padres Sobre Lesiones en Parques de Trampolines en Cut and Shoot
Si prefiere hablar en español, llame directamente a 1-888-ATTY-911. Nuestro abogado asociado Lupe Peña es hispanohablante nativo y representa a nuestros clientes de Cut y Shoot directamente — sin intérpretes y sin retrasos.
Muchas de las víctimas en los parques de trampolines son niños de familias hispanohablantes. Bajo la doctrina de Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela, si usted firmó un documento en inglés que no podía entender en un momento de presión, ese waiver puede ser invalidado. Su familia merece un abogado que peleará tan duro como peleó la familia Lakhani en Sugar Land.
Imagine This Scenario in Cut and Shoot
Imagine a Saturday afternoon at a Sky Zone or Urban Air near the I-45 corridor. The court is packed with birthday parties. The attendant, a seventeen-year-old hired two weeks ago, is distracted by a conversation with another coworker. Your seven-year-old is jumping in a zone that was supposed to be restricted to children under ten, but a teenager is allowed into the same square. The teenager lands, the double-bounce energy transfer occurs, and your child is launched off-axis, landing head-first in a foam pit that hasn’t been rotated in three months.
Your child doesn’t get up. The staff delays calling 911 because they are instructed to “downplay injuries.” You are handed a clipboard instead of a medical professional.
That is the moment your family’s life changes. That is the moment where Attorney911 takes over. We identify the operator, the franchisee, the franchisor, and the corporate parent. We subpoena the training records. We retain the biomechanical engineer. We build the life-care plan.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The case starts today.
Your child’s future depends on what happens in the next seven days. The DVR overwrites. The witnesses scatter. The park “finalizes” the incident report. We have spent over two decades stopping that process and making corporate defendants pay. We are the firm that sued BP and Walmart. We are the firm currently litigating against the University of Houston for $10 million. The PE sponsors behind the big trampoline chains don’t intimidate us.
No fee unless we win. 24/7 availability. Three Texas offices.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 now. Let us treat your family like our own.
