One bounce. One bad landing. One broken neck. That is all it takes at a trampoline park.
Imagine a Saturday afternoon at a Sky Zone or Urban Air near the City of Melissa. The parking lot is packed with families who drove in from neighborhoods along Sam Rayburn Tollway and US-75. Inside, the noise is deafening—a mix of music, shouting, and the rhythmic thud of hundreds of bodies hitting polypropylene mats. Your child is out there, laughing, burning off energy. You signed the waiver at the kiosk because the line was long and the software was fast. You believed the park when they marketed “safe family fun.”
Then, in two seconds, the double-bounce happens. A larger teenager lands on the same trampoline bed just as your seven-year-old is pushing off. The energy transfer multiplies your child’s launch force by up to four times. They are catapulted off-axis, missing the mat and striking the unpadded steel frame.
As Kaitlin “Kati” Hill described to ABC News when her three-year-old son Colton’s femur was snapped at a similar facility: “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.”
Like Kati Hill, most parents in the City of Melissa walk into these facilities thinking they are supervised playgrounds. They are not. They are industrial-scale amusement centers operating under a voluntary safety standard they wrote for themselves. When the injury happens, the park manager hands you a clipboard instead of calling 911. They point to the waiver you signed and tell you that you have no case.
They are wrong. At Attorney911, we have spent 25 years making corporate defendants accountable. We know that piece of paper you signed is not a wall—it is a speed bump. Managed by founder Ralph Manginello and a team including former insurance defense counsel, we know the industry’s playbook because we lived it. We know how to pierce the corporate layers of companies like Sky Zone, Inc. and Unleashed Brands. We know how to win.
If your child was injured at a trampoline park or on a defective backyard trampoline in the City of Melissa, the clock is already running. Evidence—specifically the surveillance video of the incident—is being overwritten right now. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. Our preservation letter goes out within 24 hours of your call.
The Truth About the Trampoline Industry in Texas
Texas is a saturated market for the trampoline park industry. With Urban Air headquartered in Grapevine and Altitude Trampoline Park based in Fort Worth, North Texas is the global epicenter of this business. For families in the City of Melissa, facilities in McKinney, Frisco, and Plano are within a short drive. But while the industry’s corporate offices are local, their safety oversight is nearly non-existent.
The Texas Regulatory Vacuum
Most parents are shocked to learn that Texas has zero statewide trampoline park safety laws. There is no state licensing. There is no mandatory state inspection. There is no requirement for these parks to even report to the government when a child is whisked away in an ambulance.
The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) regulates “Class B” inflatable rides under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151. This covers bungee trampolines and inflatable obstacle courses, but § 2151.002(1)(C)(iv) explicitly excludes the trampoline decks themselves. This means that while the state checks the insurance on a bounce house, the 30,000-square-foot sea of interconnected trampolines where most catastrophic injuries occur is entirely unregulated by the State of Texas.
This vacuum is a choice. In 2023, two separate bills were introduced in the Texas Legislature to bring these parks under state inspection. Both bills died in committee. The industry lobby fought hard to keep the City of Melissa families jumping in a “voluntary compliance” zone.
ASTM F2970: A Standard Written by the Industry for the Industry
When a park tells you they meet “industry standards,” they are usually referring to ASTM F2970. This is not a government law. It was drafted by the trampoline park industry itself. While it sets a “safety floor” for things like attendant-to-jumper ratios and foam pit depths, it is still a standard written by the peers of the people we sue.
We don’t just read ASTM F2970; we have memorized it. We know that most parks in Collin County violate these provisions every single weekend. When Sky Zone or Urban Air operates with an attendant ratio of 1:60 on a Saturday afternoon when the standard requires 1:32, they are choosing margin over your child’s safety.
Why the Waiver is Not a Wall in the City of Melissa
The first thing an insurance adjuster will tell you—likely during a “friendly” check-in call within 48 hours of the injury—is that you signed a waiver and therefore have no right to sue. In Texas, this is one of the most common legal myths.
The Munoz Doctrine: Parents Cannot Waive a Minor’s Rights
In Texas, the landmark case is Munoz v. II Jaz, Inc., decided by the Houston 14th Court of Appeals. The court held that a parent’s signature on a pre-injury waiver is unenforceable against the minor child’s personal cause of action. While your signature might theoretically bar your claim for medical bills you paid, it cannot strip your child of their right to recover for their own pain, suffering, and lifelong impairment.
The Dresser Doctrine: Express Negligence and Conspicuousness
Even for adults, a waiver in Texas must meet the “Fair Notice” requirements established in Dresser Industries v. Page Petroleum. The waiver must:
- Specifically use the word “negligence.” A general “release of all claims” isn’t enough.
- Be conspicuous. The language must be in bold, all-caps, or a contrasting color that would attract the attention of a reasonable person.
The iPad kiosks at most parks in Frisco and McKinney are designed for speed, not notice. If the release language was buried in a scrollable box that you were pressured to click through, it likely fails the Dresser test.
Gross Negligence: The Cosmic Jump Precedent
No waiver in Texas can release a defendant from “gross negligence.” Under the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling in Transportation Insurance Co. v. Moriel, gross negligence involves an extreme degree of risk that the operator was subjectively aware of but consciously ignored.
We anchor our Texas practice to the Cosmic Jump $11.485 million verdict in Harris County. In that case, a 16-year-old fell through a hole in a trampoline slide onto a concrete floor. The park knew the slide was torn. They let kids jump anyway. The jury found gross negligence, awarded $6 million in punitive damages, and rendered the signed waiver irrelevant. That is the standard of accountability we bring to every case in the City of Melissa.
Signature Mechanisms of Trampoline Injuries
To win a case against a national chain, we have to explain the physics of why their design failed. We work with world-class biomechanical engineers to reconstruct the milliseconds that changed your life.
The Double-Bounce (Energy Transfer)
This is the most common cause of pediatric fractures. When a heavier person lands on the trampoline mat, they store massive potential energy in the springs. If a smaller child is in the “push-off” phase at that same moment, that energy is transferred directly into the child’s leg. The child is not jumping anymore; they are being catapulted.
ASTM F2970 requires parks to separate jumpers by size and age to prevent this. When a park in the City of Melissa area allows a 200-pound adult to jump next to a 50-pound child, they are violating the standard and local families pay the price.
Foam Pit Failures: The Diving Illusion
Foam pits look like colorful clouds of safety. In reality, they are often dangerous landing zones. Foam blocks (cell polyurethane) compact over time. If they aren’t rotated and replaced according to a strict cadence, they lose their deceleration capacity.
A child who dives head-first into a compacted foam pit is essentially diving into a shallow pool with a concrete bottom. This is the mechanism for SCIWORA (Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality)—a pediatric phenomenon where the spinal cord is stretched and damaged even though the bones of the neck look normal on an initial CT scan.
The Rise of the Adjacent Attraction
Trampoline parks in Collin County are pivoting to the Family Entertainment Center (FEC) model. They are bolting on high-risk attractions like:
- Sky Rider Ziplines: Subject to a chain-wide strangulation pattern at Urban Air locations in Georgia, Illinois, and Florida.
- Climbing Walls: Like the one at Altitude Gastonia where 12-year-old Matthew Lu fell 20 feet to his death because an attendant failed to secure a harness.
- Go-Karts: Like the 2025 fatality of six-year-old Emma Riddle at a Florida Urban Air, caused by a mechanical throttle failure.
When these attractions fail, the park tries to use a “trampoline waiver” to cover a “mechanical ride” injury. We use the Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 to show that these specific attractions are regulated even if the trampolines aren’t, creating a distinct path to liability.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries: Beyond the ER Bill
When your child is injured, the medical-bill stack you see today is just the beginning. A “broken leg” at age eight is a fundamentally different event than a broken leg at age thirty.
Salter-Harris Growth Plate Fractures
Children’s bones grow from cartilaginous zones called physes (growth plates). A fracture through this zone—a Salter-Harris injury—can stop the bone from growing or cause it to grow at a crooked angle.
The tragedy of a Salter-Harris fracture is that the full damage may not be visible for two to five years. By the time your child hits a middle-school growth spurt and one leg is measurably shorter than the other, the park’s insurance company has already tried to close your file. We build Pediatric Life Care Plans that forecast these costs through skeletal maturity and beyond.
Exertional Rhabdomyolysis: The Under-Reported Emergency
If your child jumped for 90 minutes in a hot indoor park and arrived home with tea-colored urine and extreme muscle pain, they may be experiencing rhabdomyolysis. This is the breakdown of muscle tissue that floods the bloodstream with myoglobin, leading to acute kidney failure.
Attorney911 is uniquely positioned to handle these cases. We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving rhabdomyolysis. We have the medical experts, the nephrology consultants, and the litigation architecture to prove that the park’s failure to provide hydration and rest breaks caused your child’s kidneys to shut down.
The Evidence Clock: Why 72 Hours Matters in Melissa
The City of Melissa is a community built on family and trust, but the corporate risk management teams at national trampoline chains do not share those values. They have an evidence-destruction schedule that begins the moment you leave the parking lot.
The 7-to-30 Day Overwrite
Most trampoline park surveillance systems are set to overwrite footage every 30 days. Some purge in as little as seven. If you wait for the “friendly” insurance adjuster to finish their investigation, the video of your child being double-bounced will be gone forever.
The “Revised” Incident Report
Incident reports at parks like Urban Air and Sky Zone are often digital. Our forensic discovery protocols have shown that these reports are frequently “finalized” or “updated” days after the accident to remove damaging admissions by staff. We subpoena the metadata to see every edit,Every author, and every timestamp.
Our Preservation Action Plan:
- Immediate certified demand: We send a spoliation letter to the park and their corporate counsel within 24 hours of retention.
- Wayback Machine archaeology: we capture the park’s current waiver and marketing claims before they can “update” them to fit the accident.
- Digital Forensic imaging: We demand the raw DVR hard drive before it can be “found corrupted.”
Why Choose Attorney911 for a Melissa Injury?
You don’t need a general practice lawyer who “also does” injury cases. You need a firm that has memorized the industry standards and isn’t afraid of Fortune 500 defense teams.
The Waiver-Defeat Edge
Our associate attorney, Lupe Peña, spent years on the other side of the table. He used to defend insurance companies and recreational businesses. He knows exactly how these waivers are written to trick you, and he knows exactly where the holes are. He speaks Spanish natively, ensuring that our Hablamos Español commitment is high-level advocacy, not just translation.
Federal Court and Fortune 500 Experience
Managing Partner Ralph Manginello has gone head-to-head with some of the largest corporations in the world, including BP after the Texas City refinery explosion. We treat a case against a private-equity-backed chain like Sky Zone (Palladium Equity) or Urban Air (Seidler Equity) with the same forensic intensity we used against multinational oil companies.
No Fee Unless We Win
We work on a 100% contingency basis. We advance all the costs of the case—the $20,000 biomechanical engineer, the $15,000 life care planner, and the $10,000 medical experts. Your child’s recovery fund stays intact. You pay us nothing out of pocket. We only get paid if we recover money for you.
Frequently Asked Questions for City of Melissa Families
Can I sue if I signed the waiver at the kiosk?
Yes. In Texas, a parent cannot waive a minor child’s rights (Munoz v. II Jaz), and no waiver can release a park from gross negligence or reckless conduct. Most “waivers” are actually “Participation Agreements” that are full of legally questionable clauses.
How long do I have to file a case in Texas?
The standard statute of limitations for personal injury is two years. However, for minors, the clock is “tolled” (paused) until they turn eighteen, giving them until age twenty. Warning: While the legal deadline may be far off, the evidence deadline is days away. If the surveillance video is gone, the case is much harder to win.
Who is actually responsible—the local park or the corporate brand?
In most catastrophic cases, we sue both. The local “LLC” is often a shell with limited insurance. We use the theory of apparent agency and franchisor control to reach the deeper pockets of the parent companies and their private equity owners.
What if my child was injured by another child?
The park is still responsible. ASTM F2970 requires monitors to prevent “horseplay” and separate jumpers by size. The park cannot outsource its safety duty to the six-year-olds on the court. If a monitor wasn’t watching, the park is liable for the collision.
Why was my child’s urine dark after jumping at the park?
This is a medical emergency. It is a classic sign of rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown). Go to the Level 1 pediatric trauma center serving Collin County immediately and demand a creatine kinase (CK) test. Once your child is stable, call us.
The Kill-Shot Sequence: Your Path to Justice
What happened at the trampoline park wasn’t an accident—it was the output of a system. The AAP has been warning about these hazards since 1999. The industry wrote ASTM F2970 because they knew these injuries were coming. The park operated with too few people to watch your child because they wanted to increase their profit margin.
Attorney911 was built for exactly this fight. We have the 25 years of experience, the former defense insiders, and the $10 million medical litigation architecture that these cases demand. We aren’t just local to the City of Melissa; we are a nationwide authority on trampoline accountability.
Your child’s case depends on what is preserved this week. The DVR overwrites in days. The attendant who saw what happened could quit tomorrow. Do not let the insurance adjuster talk you into a quick, cheap settlement that leaves your child’s future growth-plate needs unaddressed.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Hablamos Español. Llame al 888-288-9911.
No fee unless we win. The consultation is 100% free.
The park has lawyers. The corporate parent has lawyers. The PE sponsor has lawyers. So do you. We are ready to work for you today.
