“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.” These words, shared by Kati Hill with ABC News after her three-year-old son Colton suffered a broken femur at a trampoline park, resonate with every parent who has ever stood in a trauma bay in Denton County. Colton spent months in a body cast. Kati’s warning has been shared hundreds of thousands of times because it touches on a terrifying truth that the industry hides: we had no idea.
If your family is currently dealing with the fallout of an injury at a trampoline park in City of Little Elm, or if a defective backyard trampoline has changed your life in a single afternoon, you are not alone. And more importantly, the guilt you may feel as a parent does not belong to you. You signed a waiver because the line was long and the kiosk was fast. You let your child jump because you wanted them to have fun. None of that caused the injury. The park was injured because of a system—an architecture of negligence that prioritizes corporate margins over pediatric safety.
At Attorney911, led by Ralph Manginello with over 25 years of experience, we have seen this architecture before. We have litigated against Fortune 500 giants like BP, Walmart, and Amazon. We know how the conglomerates behind brands like Sky Zone, Inc. and Unleashed Brands (the parent of Urban Air) operate. We know their insurers, we know their defense firms, and through our associate attorney Lupe Peña—who used to defend these very companies from the other side—we know exactly where their waivers are full of holes.
Whether your child was injured at an Urban Air in Frisco, a Sky Zone near the Dallas North Tollway, or on a Jumpking trampoline in a City of Little Elm backyard, the evidence that determines your case is evaporating right now. Surveillance video at these facilities is often overwritten in as little as 7 to 30 days. We are here to act immediately to preserve your rights and hold these institutional defendants accountable.
The Inherent Dangers Are Actually Foreseeable Business Decisions
The trampoline industry often uses the phrase “inherent risk” as a shield. They want you up to believe that a broken neck or a shattered growth plate is just an unfortunate byproduct of a high-energy activity. We know better. Under the law in City of Little Elm and throughout Texas, a risk is only “inherent” if it cannot be eliminated through reasonable care.
When an Urban Air monitor is on their phone while a 200-pound adult double-bounces a 60-pound child off the court, that is not an inherent risk. That is a breach of ASTM F2970, the safety standard that the trampoline industry actually wrote for itself. When a foam pit is compacted so deeply that a teenager strikes the concrete floor beneath, that is not an inherent risk. It is a maintenance failure.
The Foreseeability Stack
Your case starts with proving that the park knew this would happen. We build this through what we call the Six Rungs of Foreseeability:
- Medical Consensus Since 1999: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has formally advised against recreational trampoline use for over 25 years. Every park operator in City of Little Elm has had a quarter-century of notice that their product is unsafe for children.
- The Industry’s Own Standard: ASTM F2970 was drafted by the industry to set a safety floor. When a park ignores attendant-to-jumper ratios, they are violating the very rules they admitted were necessary to keep people alive.
- CPSC Tracking: The Consumer Product Safety Commission has tracked approximately 300,000 trampoline-related ER visits annually for decades. The numbers are public, and the manufacturers know them.
- Franchisor Manuals: National chains like Sky Zone and Altitude have operations manuals that command specific safety protocols. When the local franchisee fails to follow them, the franchisor’s knowledge of the risk becomes a primary liability lever.
- Prior Incident Patterns: We subpoena the chain-wide incident history. If a Sky Rider zipline at one Urban Air has strangled a child (as documented in Newnan, Georgia), every other Urban Air is on notice of that design defect.
- Internal Corporate Communication: Through discovery, we often find that private equity sponsors—the firms behind Sky Zone, Inc. (Palladium Equity Partners) and Unleashed Brands (Seidler Equity Partners)—approved cost-cutting measures that reduced staff and increased risks.
In Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million against Cosmic Jump because they found gross negligence in a case involving a torn slide and exposed concrete. The waiver was signed, but the jury recognized that “it’s a dangerous activity” is no excuse for “we knew it was broken and didn’t fix it.” That is the kind of case we are built to handle for City of Little Elm families.
Breaking Down the Mechanisms of Injury
Understanding how an injury happens is the key to proving why it was a breach of duty. In City of Little Elm, we see distinct patterns of injury depending on where the accident occurred.
Double-Bounce Energy Transfer
This is the signature trampoline park injury. Physics doesn’t negotiate. When a heavier jumper lands while a lighter child is in their push-off phase, the energy stored in the trampoline bed is transferred to the smaller child. This can multiply the child’s launch force by up to four times. The child isn’t just jumping; they are being launched like a projectile.
ASTM F2970 requires parks to maintain strict age and weight separation. On a Saturday afternoon in a busy park near FM 423, these rules are often the first to be ignored to accommodate more customers. The result is often a comminuted femoral shaft fracture or a Salter-Harris growth plate injury—the kind of trauma that requires a decade of orthopedic monitoring to ensure the child’s limb grows straight.
The Foam Pit Catastrophe
Foam pits create a dangerous illusion of safety. If the foam cubes are compressed, unrotated, or if the pit is shallow, a jumper can strike the hard subfloor from a height of several feet.
The biomechanics of a head-first foam pit landing are identical to a diving accident in a shallow pool. We see cervical axial compression and hyperflexion injuries that can result in permanent quadriplegia. This reality is why the industry is rapidly transitioning from foam pits to airbags. A park in City of Little Elm that still uses a foam pit is using an outdated, dangerous technology because it was cheaper than upgrading to the state of the art.
Sky Rider and Harness Attractions
Urban Air’s signature “Sky Rider” and other indoor zipline rollers have a documented pattern of strangulation by harness cords and falls from height. In Las Vegas, a ten-year-old fell 20 feet from a zipline during a birthday party when the harness failed. In Newnan, Georgia, a six-year-old was strangled by a cord while her father had to climb the netting to rescue her because no employee intervened.
These aren’t just accidents; they are design defects and supervision failures. If your child was hurt on a harness attraction, we look at the manufacturer—often UA Attractions, LLC—and the training of the specific attendant who failed to secure the fall-protection equipment.
Extended-Jumping Rhabdomyolysis
This is a medical emergency that follows “all-day jump” packages or high-intensity summer jump sessions in North Texas heat. When a child jumps for 90 minutes without adequate hydration, their muscle tissue can begin to break down, releasing myoglobin into the bloodstream.
This condition, rhabdomyolysis, can lead to acute kidney injury and kidney failure. It often presents 12 to 48 hours later as dark, cola-colored urine and extreme muscle pain. We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving this exact muscle-and-organ pathology. We know the experts and the medicine required to prove that a park’s failure to provide hydration and rest breaks caused life-threatening organ failure.
Why Your Signed Waiver Is Not a Wall
The number one reason families in City of Little Elm hesitate to call an attorney is the “iPad waiver” they signed at the front desk. They believe they’ve signed away their child’s future.
Under Texas law, that is a misconception that insurance adjusters choose to encourage. Our associate attorney Lupe Peña used to sit on the other side of the table, writing the arguments these parks use. Today, he uses that “playbook against them” to dismantle the waiver defense on several fronts:
The Minor Child Void
In Texas, for thirty years, the ruling in Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. has established that a parent’s pre-injury signature generally cannot waive a minor child’s own direct tort claim. While the park might try to invoke the 2025 Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air decision to force you into arbitration, that does not mean your case is over. It only means the forum has shifted. Cases in arbitration, like the $15.6 million award for Damion Collins, prove that skilled advocates can still win the maximum recovery in any venue.
The Gross Negligence Carve-Out
No waiver in Texas can release a defendant from liability for gross negligence. If the park knew of a risk—like a torn mat or a monitor who was habitually inattentive—and they chose to do nothing, they acted with conscious indifference. That conduct voids the release. In the Cosmic Jump case in Harris County, $6 million of the $11.485 million verdict was in punitive damages specifically because the park’s behavior crossed the line from being sloppy to being reckless.
The Fair Notice Doctrine
Texas law requires waivers to be both “conspicuous” and meet the “express negligence” doctrine. Per the seminal case Dresser Industries v. Page Petroleum, a waiver must be so prominent that a reasonable person would notice it. Kiosk waivers buried in thirty screens of text often fail this test. If the waiver didn’t explicitly use the word “negligence” in a way that screamed for your attention, it may not even cover ordinary careless acts.
Bilingual Formation Challenges
Many City of Little Elm families are Spanish-speaking. If the only waiver offered was in English and the attendant pushed you to sign quickly so the kids could start their time, the contract formation itself is flawed. The doctrine established in Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela allows us to challenge waivers presented to patrons who lack English literacy when no translation was offered. Lupe Peña habla con usted directamente—sin intérpretes.
Piercing the Five-Layer Defendant Stack
When we sue a national chain like Sky Zone or Urban Air, we aren’t just looking at the local LLC. We perform a “corporate structure archaeology” to find the real money. A typical trampoline park case in City of Little Elm involves a stacked defense:
- Layer 1: The Operator LLC: The local business that is often undercapitalized.
- Layer 2: The Franchisee: The multi-unit group that owns several parks.
- Layer 3: The Franchisor: Franchising entities that dictate the safety standards.
- Layer 4: The Parent Company: Conglomerates like Sky Zone, Inc. (renamed from CircusTrix) or Unleashed Brands.
- Layer 5: The Private Equity Sponsor: The ultimate financial backers, such as Palladium Equity Partners or Seidler Equity Partners.
We go upstream. The operator’s $1 million primary policy is almost never enough to cover a lifetime of care for a catastrophic injury. We look for the umbrella layers, the excess towers, and the franchisor’s additional-insured coverage. We also look at the component manufacturers. If a net anchor failed or a harness from a company like Ropes Courses, Inc. (the manufacturer in the Matthew Lu fatality) was defective, they are in the case too.
The Evidence Clock Is Running Right Now
In City of Little Elm, the Saturday afternoon your child was injured is being erased from the park’s hard drive as you read this. Most parks use DVR systems that overwrite old footage every 7 to 30 days. Incident reports get “finalized” by risk management teams, often sanitizing the original handwritten notes from the night of the accident. Waivers in the kiosk system can be updated, making it harder to prove what you actually saw on the screen that day.
When you retain Attorney911, our preservation protocol begins within 24 hours:
- The Certified Spoliation Letter: We demand the preservation of all surveillance angles, time-clock records, and digital metadata.
- Metadata Forensic Acquisition: We pull the version history of the incident report. When a report is “revised” 48 hours after the injury, we find out who edited it and what they changed.
- Attendant Identification: We track down the court monitors who were on duty. High turnover means the person who saw your child get hurt might not work there in two weeks. We find them while their memory is fresh.
- Scene Documentation: We dispatch investigators to document the current state of the equipment, the lighting, and the signage before remediation begins.
The park’s insurance adjuster will call you in 48 hours. She will sound friendly. She will ask about your child’s recovery. She will suggest that the park would like to “help” with the medical copays. This is a tactic designed to buy time so the video can overwrite and she can get a recorded statement from you that minimizes the park’s fault. Our associate attorney used to train these adjusters. We know how to stop them.
The Real Cost of a Pediatric Trampoline Injury
If your child has a broken bone, the ER bill is truly the smallest part of the case. For a child in City of Little Elm, a serious orthopedic or neurological injury creates a “Pediatric Life-Care Plan” that spans decades.
Children’s bones are biomechanically distinct. They have growth plates (physes) that are weaker than their ligaments. A Salter-Harris fracture—the most common pediatric trampoline fracture—is an injury to that growth plate. If not monitored correctly through skeletal maturity, it can produce limb-length discrepancies or permanent angular deformities.
A “broken ankle” at age eight is actually ten years of specialist follow-ups, potential corrective surgeries at age fourteen, and a lifetime of biomechanical challenges. When we calculate damages, we count the cost of:
- Future Surgeries: Hardware removal and growth-arrest corrections.
- Educational Accommodations: If a TBI has resulted in cognitive fatigue or regression.
- Lost Earning Capacity: Quantifying how a permanent physical or cognitive deficit affects the child’s entire adult working life.
- Psychological Trauma: PTSD in children often manifests as school avoidance, repetitive play re-enactment, and sleep disturbance.
We work with life-care planners and forensic economists to ensure that your child’s recovery fund covers more than just the past insurance deductibles. National verdicts for catastrophic pediatric spinal injuries have reached into the $10M to $25M+ range because the cost of care for a developing body is immense.
Frequently Asked Questions for Little Elm Families
Can I sue if my child was hurt at a birthday party where another parent signed the waiver?
Yes. A signature by another parent or a party host does not typically bind your child to a waiver of their tort rights. In Texas, the law is very specific about who has the authority to sign for a minor (Tex. Fam. Code § 153.073). Often, grandmother, an aunt, or a friend’s parent has no legal authority to sign away your child’s rights. This is a major gap in the park’s defense that we exploit immediately.
What should I do if the park manager told us not to call 911?
This is a documented industry pattern. Multiple Tripadvisor reviews for Urban Air locations, including the one in Southlake, have claimed that staff are told to downplay injuries and discourage emergency calls. If this happened to you, it is powerful evidence of gross negligence. Call 911 yourself, get medical care, and document the manager’s refusal. It is a sign of conscious indifference to your child’s safety.
how much does it cost to hire an attorney for a trampoline injury?
You pay nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee basis, meaning we only get paid if we win your case. Our firm advances all the costs of the litigation—the biomechanical engineers, the orthopedic consultants, and the forensic experts. As client Donald Wilcox said, “One company said they would not accept my case. Then I got a call from Manginello… I got a call to come pick up this handsome check.” We take the risks so you can focus on your child’s recovery.
The trampoline park replaced the foam pit with an airbag after my kid got hurt. Does that help?
While many courts exclude “subsequent remedial measures” to prove negligence, the industry-wide shift toward airbags is admissible as evidence of the available state-of-the-art safety technology that the park chose to ignore until it was too late for your child.
how long do I have to file a lawsuit in Texas?
The personal injury statute of limitations is two years from the date of injury. For minors, the clock is typically tolled until they turn eighteen, giving them until age twenty. However, you should never rely on that extra time. The evidence deadlines are much shorter. Surveillance is gone in weeks. The case needs to be built while the witnesses can still be found.
Why City of Little Elm Families Choose Attorney911
Most personal injury firms treat a trampoline injury like a simple slip-and-fall. They don’t know the ASTM F2970 standards. They don’t understand the physics of energy transfer. They are afraid of the billionaire backing of private equity firms like Palladium or Seidler.
We are not. We’ve been here for over two decades. We’ve litigated the BP refinery explosion. We’re litigating a $10 million acute kidney failure case right now. We have offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont, but we handle cases for families in City of Little Elm and nationwide.
- We know the waiver weaknesses: Lupe Peña knows their defense playbook because he used to write it.
- We know the medicine: We understand Salter-Harris fractures and the rhabdomyolysis myoglobin cascade.
- We know the urgency: Our spoliation letters go out within 24 hours of retention.
- We know the stakes: We treat your family like our own because, as client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.”
Protecting Your Child’s Future Today
What happened at that facility wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable output of a business model that put 50 kids on a court with one untrained monitor. It was a maintenance log that said the foam pit was full when it was compressed to half-depth. It was an insurance adjuster’s attempt to close a file before a family knew the growth plate was destroyed.
Your child’s case is decided by what gets preserved this week. By day 10, the surveillance footage is likely gone. By day 30, the “updated” version of the incident report is all the system will show. Don’t let a piece of paper you clicked through at a kiosk stop you from getting the accountability your family deserves.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We are available 24/7. Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña habla con usted directamente—sin intérpretes. We advance every expense, and you pay nothing unless we win. The park has a fleet of corporate lawyers. So do we.
Let’s start building your child’s recovery today.
Attorney911 | The Manginello Law Firm
Houston · Austin · Beaumont · Nationwide
1-888-288-9911
ralph@atty911.com | lupe@atty911.com
