“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, the mother of three-year-old Colton, telling ABC News what happened the day a trampoline park broke her son’s femur. For parents in New Braunfels, this scene isn’t just a news clip. It is a possibility every time they pull into the parking lot of local family entertainment centers off I-35 or walnut Avenue. We’ve heard that scream. We’ve stood with the families who had no idea that a birthday party at the Urban Air in New Braunfels or a jump session at a nearby Sky Zone could end in a body cast or a neonatal trauma bay.
In Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million — including $6 million in punitive damages — against the operator of Cosmic Jump after a 16-year-old fell through a torn trampoline slide onto concrete and suffered a traumatic brain injury. The waiver was signed. The jury found gross negligence anyway. That is the largest reported jury verdict against a U.S. commercial trampoline park, and it happened right here in Texas. It is exactly the kind of case we are built to handle. If you are standing at the bedside of an injured child in New Braunfels or recovering from your own catastrophic landing, you don’t need a generalist. You need a team that has spent 25 years making Fortune 500 companies pay for the business decisions that maim children.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in New Braunfels
New Braunfels is a hub of family recreation. We have the rivers, the parks, and increasingly, the industrial-scale trampoline courts. But our local recreation culture has a dark side that the industry doesn’t advertise. Approximately 1.6% of all pediatric emergency-department trauma visits in the United States are now trampoline-related. That number, published in 2024 by the American Journal of Roentgenology, sits alongside recent data in Pediatrics showing over 13,000 documented injuries from 8.4 million jumper-hours.
When you take your family to the Urban Air in New Braunfels at 604 S Walnut Ave, or head into San Antonio for an afternoon at Altitude, you are entering a facility governed by a safety standard (ASTM F2970) that the trampoline industry actually wrote about itself. This voluntary standard established a safety floor that parks in New Braunfels routinely fall below to protect their profit margins. Whether it’s an unsupervised double-bounce on a Saturday afternoon or a foam pit that hasn’t been deep-cleaned or refilled in months, these aren’t accidents. They are the predictable output of a system.
We represent families. We represent children. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has over 25 years of experience in federal and state courts, and he has spent his career holding negligent defendants accountable. Our team includes Lupe Peña, a former insurance defense attorney who used to sit on the other side of the table. He knows exactly which waiver clauses in New Braunfels park agreements are airtight and which ones are full of holes because he used to write them. When the park’s adjuster calls you with a “friendly” check-in, you need to know that we’ve already read their playbook.
One Jump, a Lifetime of Consequences: The Injury Mechanisms
The physics of a trampoline are unforgiving. A trampoline bed stores elastic potential energy and redirects it toward the jumper, often with force the human body wasn’t designed to decelerate. In a New Braunfels park, the most common mechanism of catastrophe is the double-bounce energy transfer.
The Double-Bounce: A Physics Trap
When a 200-pound adult lands on the same trampoline mat where a 60-pound child is starting to push off, the energy transfer can multiply the child’s launch force by up to 400%. The child isn’t just jumping; they are being catapulted. This is how we see comminuted femoral shaft fractures and Salter-Harris growth plate injuries in New Braunfels athletes who should have been safe in a “supervised” environment. ASTM F2970 requires parks to separate jumpers by age and weight, but on a busy New Braunfels Saturday, those ratios are often the first thing to slip.
The Foam Pit: Soft Appearance, Hard Reality
Foam pits in New Braunfels-area facilities often give a false sense of security. If the foam blocks are compacted below the ASTM eight-inch minimum or the pit floor is inadequately padded, a head-first or feet-first entry causes the jumper to “bottom out.” We see cervical spine injuries and calcaneal burst fractures from this exact mechanism. In fact, many parks are moving away from foam pits toward airbags because the industry knows how dangerous pits are. If the park you visited in New Braunfels still uses the old foam-block system, they made a cost-saving decision that put your child’s neck at risk.
Adjacent Attractions: Go-Karts and Ziplines
Trampoline parks in New Braunfels are no longer just about jumping. They have pivoted to the Family Entertainment Center (FEC) model, bolting on higher-risk attractions like electric go-karts and “Sky Rider” indoor coasters. The Emma Riddle case in Florida (a 2025 go-kart fatality) and the recurring pattern of Sky Rider strangulations at Urban Air locations nationwide prove that the risk envelope has expanded far beyond the mat. If your child was hurt on a non-trampoline attraction at a New Braunfels park, the waiver you signed might not even legally cover that specific activity.
The “Paper Shield”: Why the Waiver Does Not End Your Case
The most common lie told to New Braunfels parents is that the digital signature they gave at a kiosk ended their right to sue. It did not. Texas law is nuanced, and our firm knows how to dismantle these agreements clause by clause.
The Gross Negligence Carve-Out
In Texas, no waiver can release a defendant from gross negligence. If the park in New Braunfels knew a trampoline mat was torn — as in the Cosmic Jump case — or if they intentionally understaffed a court during a peak holiday weekend to save on labor costs, they have shown a conscious indifference to your safety. That level of misconduct voids the “paper shield” entirely.
Signer Authority and the Delfingen Doctrine
At many New Braunfels birthday parties or large family gatherings, the person who signed the waiver wasn’t even the legal guardian. Texas Family Code § 153.073 is clear: only a parent or court-appointed conservator can bind a minor. If an aunt, grandparent, or family friend signed for your child in New Braunfels, the waiver’s footing is destroyed before the case even starts.
Furthermore, if your family is primarily Spanish-speaking and the park presented an English-only iPad waiver under pressure, the Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela doctrine may apply. This Texas appellate ruling allows courts to refuse enforcement of contracts where the signer lacked English literacy and no translation was offered. Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña speaks with our clients directly, ensuring the insurance companies in New Braunfels don’t use a language gap to cheat a family out of justice.
Building the Case: The 48-Hour Evidence Clock
In New Braunfels, the evidence of your injury is disappearing. Park surveillance DVR systems are typically set to overwrite in as little as 7 to 30 days. The waiver kiosk database may purge version histories on a 72-hour rolling cycle. The employee who witnessed the double-bounce may transfer to a different location or quit within a month.
When you retain Attorney911, our spoliation letter goes out to the park’s general counsel within 24 hours. We demand the preservation of:
- All multi-angle surveillance footage.
- The original incident report (before it can be “revised” by management).
- The attendant shift logs and training files.
- The daily inspection logs for the preceding 30 days.
- The specific equipment or foam blocks involved in the injury.
We don’t wait for the park to “check their files.” We use digital forensic examiners to ensure nothing is deleted. If the park in New Braunfels claims the video “glitched” at the exact moment of injury, we pursue Mathew Knight-style spoliation sanctions. A Georgia jury awarded $3.5 million in a case where four cameras “happened” to fail at once. We know how to turn their evidence destruction into your recovery.
Why Choose Attorney911 for Your New Braunfels Injury Case?
Most personal injury firms treat a trampoline case like a simple slip-and-fall. We don’t. We built our practice around the technical, medical, and corporate complexity these cases demand.
- The UH Rhabdo Bridge: We are currently litigating a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. This is the same muscle-and-organ pathology seen in children who jump for ninety minutes straight in a hot New Braunfels indoor park without adequate water. We already have the medical experts and the institutional accountability playbook ready to go.
- Fortune 500 Experience: Ralph Manginello fought BP after the Texas City refinery explosion. The parent companies behind Sky Zone (Palladium Equity) and Urban Air (Seidler Equity) hire the same high-priced defense firms BP used. We aren’t intimidated by their corporate layers or private-equity backers.
- The Insider Edge: Lupe Peña’s background in insurance defense means he knows the exact arguments the New Braunfels park will use to minimize your claim. He’s already beaten them from the inside.
- Zero Upfront Cost: We work on a contingency fee basis. We advance the costs of the biomechanical engineer, the pediatric orthopedic consultant, and the life-care planner. If we don’t win, you don’t pay.
Catastrophic Pediatric Injuries: Beyond the ER Bill
A “broken leg” at a New Braunfels trampoline park is never just a broken leg. If the fracture goes through the growth plate (a Salter-Harris Type II or III injury), the damage may not manifest for years. By age 14, that child may have a measurable limb-length discrepancy or a bone that grew crooked.
Because we specialize in pediatric cases, we don’t settle for the current medical bill. We build a Pediatric Life-Care Plan. We forecast the next 10 to 20 years of orthopedic monitoring, the possible corrective surgeries, and the lost earning capacity if a traumatic brain injury affects your child’s academic trajectory. Most firms leave millions of dollars on the table because they don’t know how to document the long-tail damage to a developing body. We do.
Frequently Asked Questions for New Braunfels Families
Can I sue if I signed the waiver at an Urban Air in New Braunfels?
Yes. In Texas, waivers are routinely voided for gross negligence, failure to satisfy the Dresser fair-notice doctrine, or if the signature was obtained from a non-guardian. Furthermore, parental waivers cannot extinguish a minor’s personal cause of action in many circumstances under Munoz v. II Jaz.
Are trampoline parks safe for toddlers in New Braunfels?
The American Academy of Pediatrics has advised against all recreational trampoline use for children under six since 1999. If a New Braunfels park marketed “Toddler Time” to your family and your child was hurt, the park acted against 25 years of medical consensus. That is powerful evidence of negligence.
How much is my New Braunfels trampoline injury case worth?
Verdicts vary by injury. Cosmic Jump in Houston reached $11.485 million. Damion Collins in Kansas reached $15.6 million in arbitration. Even smaller cases involving growth plate fractures in children routinely anchor in the $500,000 to $2 million range because of the lifetime care required.
What should I do if my child has dark urine after a trampoline park visit?
Go to the ER immediately and ask for a creatine kinase (CK) blood test. This is a sign of rhabdomyolysis, a medical emergency that can cause kidney failure. After they are stabilized, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. We litigate active $10M rhabdo cases and know the medicine better than any firm in Texas.
Does it matter which brand of park it is?
Yes, because the corporate parents differ. Sky Zone, DEFY, and Rockin’ Jump are now under Sky Zone, Inc. (backed by Palladium Equity). Urban Air is parented by Unleashed Brands (Seidler Equity). We perform “corporate archeology” to find the deepest insurance tower, going far above the local New Braunfels franchisee’s limited policy.
The Case Starts Today
The park in New Braunfels already has a risk-management team working on their defense. Their insurer has a panel of lawyers ready to point at the waiver and close your file. You need a team that fights back harder.
Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña are ready to take this fight to the corporate offices in Bedford and Dallas. We will find every insurance layer. We will subpoena every video angle. We will make them pay for the decision to put profit ahead of your child’s safety.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24/7. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win. Your child’s recovery fund stays untouched while we advance every expert cost. The evidence in New Braunfels is overwriting right now — don’t wait until it’s gone.
Verbatim Parent Queries for New Braunfels Residents
“Can I sue if I signed the paper at the New Braunfels Urban Air?”
Yes. That paper is not a brick wall. We attack the waiver on five different vectors including gross negligence and lack of conspicuousness.
“The manager at the park said it was a freak accident and offered me a refund. Should I take it?”
That refund is a red herring. It often comes with a “satisfaction” form that acts as a full release of your claim. Your child’s broken femur is worth more than a $30 refund. Call us before signing anything.
“Why did no staff stop the bigger kids from jumping with my toddler?”
Understaffing is a business model. Trampoline parks in New Braunfels often run at half the ASTM-required attendant ratio to hit profit targets. When they fail to enforce age-separation rules, they are choosing to accept the risk of your child being crushed.
“Is my kid’s head injury worse than they’re saying?”
If your child has a persistent headache, dizziness, or confusion after a New Braunfels park visit, treat it as a Traumatic Brain Injury. A “mild” concussion in a developing brain can have lifelong cognitive consequences. Get a second opinion and preserve the record.
“How much does a trampoline-park lawyer in New Braunfels cost?”
With Attorney911, it costs nothing out of pocket. We work on a contingency basis, meaning we only get paid if we recover money for you. We advance all the costs for engineering and medical experts.
The Standard of Care: ASTM F2970 vs. EN ISO 23659:2022
When we depose the operations manager of a New Braunfels park, we don’t just ask if they are safe. We walk them through ASTM F2970 Section 10. We ask why they didn’t meet the attendant ratios that their own industry lobbyists wrote. We point to EN ISO 23659:2022 — the international standard that much of the world treats as mandatory, while the U.S. treats it as optional.
If your child had been injured in Europe or Australia, the park would be under a binding national safety standard. Here in New Braunfels, they operate in a regulatory vacuum. That gap is where we build the negligence case. We cite the Teague 2024 studies from Pediatrics to prove that the park knew the foam pit was the most dangerous attraction in the building but failed to maintain the fill depth.
The Evidence Playbook for New Braunfels Families
- Photograph everything: Not just the injury, but the tear in the padding, the lack of signs, and the monitor who was on his phone.
- Get the original report: Parks often “revise” their incident reports 48 hours after the accident. Request your copy immediately.
- Don’t give a statement: The insurance adjuster for the New Braunfels park is not your friend. Every “I’m not sure” will be used to argue you were at fault.
- Call 1-888-ATTY-911: We send the spoliation letter that freezes the DVR. We find the witnesses before they move on to their next job.
We represent families across Texas and nationwide from our offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont. We’ve gone toe-to-toe with global giants like BP and Walmart. The conglomerate behind your local New Braunfels trampoline park is next.
Call now. The case is decided by what gets preserved this week. 1-888-ATTY-911.
Why “Toddler Time” Violates Pediatric Consensus
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been clear since 1999: trampolines do not belong in the home or recreational centers for young children. When a New Braunfels park hosts “Toddler Time,” they are inviting a demographic that the medical community has banned from the equipment for over twenty-five years. Their marketing to parents of three-year-olds is the foundation of our negligence theory. They sold you “safety” while ignoring the doctors.
The Rhabdomyolysis Risk in New Braunfels Parks
Exertional rhabdomyolysis happens when muscles are pushed to the point of rupture. In an indoor park in New Braunfels during a 100-degree Texas summer, the heat and continuous jumping create a perfect storm. If your son or daughter comes home listless, with rock-hard muscles and dark urine, their kidneys are under attack. Our active $10 million UH case means we already have the expert team who knows how to link this trauma to the park’s failure to provide mandatory breaks and hydration.
Urban Air New Braunfels and the I-35 Rec Corridor
The trampoline parks serving New Braunfels, located conveniently along the I-35 corridor, draw families from across Comal and Guadalupe counties. But high traffic leads to lower standards. When the volume of birthday parties peaks, the training of the court monitors drops. We have seen the patterns in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. We are now seeing them here.
The Five-Layer Defendant Stack
When we sue for a New Braunfels trampoline injury, we don’t just name the local LLC. We go upstream:
- The Operator LLC: The entity at the building.
- The Franchisee: The local owner group.
- The Franchisor: e.g., Urban Air Franchise Holdings.
- The Parent Corporation: Unleashed Brands or Sky Zone, Inc.
- The Private Equity Sponsor: Palladium or Seidler.
The money is upstream. The decisions to cut safety staffing were made in boardrooms, not just at the front desk. We pierce the corporate layers to find the coverage that a catastrophic injury requires.
Conclusion: Justice for New Braunfels Families
What happened to your child at the trampoline park wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable output of a system that puts margin ahead of growth plates. The AAP has been warning for a quarter-century. The industry wrote its own standard and then failed it. The waiver was drafted by lawyers who knew it was a bluff.
Attorney911 was built for this fight. Ralph Manginello brings 25+ years of experience. Lupe Peña knows the insurance defense playbook from the inside. We have the 50-state database of waiver law and the medical expertise from our active $10M rhabdo litigation.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win. We advance every expense — the biomechanist, the pediatric surgeon, the life-care planner. Your child’s recovery fund stays untouched. Our spoliation letter goes out within 24 hours. The case starts today.
Frequently Asked Questions
“Can I sue if my neighbor’s trampoline in New Braunfels hurt my child?”
Yes, under the attractive nuisance doctrine. Texas law holds homeowners accountable for hazardous conditions that attract children who are too young to realize the risk. We look at their homeowner’s policy and umbrella layers to find coverage.
“My kid was at an Urban Air birthday party in New Braunfels and fell off the climbing wall. Is that a case?”
Yes. Harness failures and attendants failing to click in fall-arrest equipment are common and catastrophic. The Matthew Lu case in Gastonia ($15M+ potential) is the benchmark. If the harness was unattached, the park is responsible.
“What if my child has a growth plate injury from a trampoline in New Braunfels?”
A Salter-Harris fracture at age 8 is a major case. It requires a decade of monitoring because the bone may stop growing or grow crooked. We calculate the lifetime medical cost and the loss of future athletic opportunities.
“How long does the New Braunfels park keep its video?”
Usually 30 days or less. Some overwrite in 7 days. If you haven’t sent a legal preservation demand, that video is likely already gone. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 and we’ll send it today.
“The waiver screen in the New Braunfels park lobby was so fast I didn’t read it. Does that matter?”
Yes. Texas requires “conspicuousness.” If the waiver was buried in 20 pages of digital text or you were pressured to sign quickly so the kids could jump, we challenge the “fair notice” of that contract.
“We only speak Spanish. Can we still sue the New Braunfels trampoline park?”
¡Sí! Lupe Peña habla español directamente con usted. El caso Delfingen en Texas protege a las familias que firmaron documentos en inglés que no podían entender. No deje que el idioma sea una barrera para la justicia de su hijo.
Our Offices Serving New Braunfels:
- Houston (Main): 1177 West Loop S, Suite 1600
- Houston (Dunlavy): 1635 Dunlavy Street
- Austin: 316 West 12th Street, Suite 311
- Beaumont: Consultations by appointment
1-888-ATTY-911. Answered 24/7. Hablamos Español. The consultation is free. The case starts now.
