If your child was hurt at a Texas trampoline park, read this first

A Texas mother named Kaitlin Hill — her friends call her Kati — took her three-year-old son Colton to a trampoline park during a “Toddler Time” session. The session was advertised for small children. A bigger child landed on the same trampoline bed Colton was on. Colton’s femur — the strongest bone in the human body — snapped clean through. Kati later told ABC News what she heard at that instant: “the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.” Colton spent months in a body cast. Kati’s warning post was shared a quarter of a million times. She ended it with five words: “We had no idea.”

You are not alone, and this did not have to happen.

In Houston — a few miles from our main office — a Harris County jury awarded $11.485 million against the operator of a trampoline park called Cosmic Jump. The injured child, sixteen-year-old Max Menchaca, fell through a torn slide onto concrete on the first day of his summer vacation. He fractured his skull. He sustained a traumatic brain injury. The park had a signed waiver. The jury found the park grossly negligent anyway and awarded $5.485 million in compensatory damages plus $6 million in punitive damages. As of this writing, it remains the largest reported jury verdict against a U.S. commercial trampoline park.

In Sugar Land, the Lakhani family says an Urban Air employee strapped their fourteen-year-old daughter into a climbing-wall harness and never attached the fall-protection equipment. She fell approximately thirty feet. Both ankles broke. Her spine compressed. The family told ABC13 Houston that employees refused to help. The family also says they never signed a waiver at all.

In Odessa, a minor named Shawn Parker jumped into what was advertised as a foam pit at Altitude Trampoline Park. According to the petition filed in Ector County, the pit was not actually a foam pit — “instead of having a trampoline at the bottom, it merely had a dense foam pad.” His tibia and fibula fractured.

In Southlake, an Urban Air parent’s Tripadvisor review — read by hundreds of thousands of Texas families — included this sentence: “Employees are specifically instructed by management to NOT call 911.”

These are Texas stories. They are the tip of the iceberg.

We are The Manginello Law Firm, the firm behind Attorney911. We are a Houston-based catastrophic personal-injury practice with offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont. Ralph Manginello founded the firm in 1998. He is admitted to federal court in the Southern District of Texas and is dual-barred in Texas and New York. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years on the other side of the table — defending insurance carriers and recreational businesses against injury claims. She wrote and defended the same waiver clauses Texas trampoline parks rely on today. She speaks Spanish natively. Now she fights for families.

If your child was injured at a trampoline park anywhere in Texas — at a Sky Zone in Frisco, an Urban Air in Pearland, an Altitude in Sugar Land, a Launch in West Houston, a Cosmic Air in Katy, a Jumping World in Beaumont, an iJump in Tyler, an Altitude in Odessa, an Xtreme Jump in McAllen, a Rush Fun Park in San Antonio, a Sky Zone in El Paso, or anywhere in between — call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. Our preservation-of-evidence letter goes out within 24 hours of your call, every time, no exceptions. Hablamos Español. Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911 y pregunte por Lupe Peña.

This guide is the most comprehensive Texas trampoline-park injury resource on the open web. It covers every major park chain operating in Texas, every catastrophic injury mechanism documented in the medical and legal literature, every Texas legal doctrine that bears on these cases, the 2025 jurisdictional split that defines this practice area today, and what your family needs to do in the first 72 hours after an injury. It is long because the subject is large. It is honest because we wrote it on the side of the people who get hurt — and we do not pretend otherwise.

The Texas trampoline-park reality, metro by metro

Texas is the most saturated commercial trampoline-park market in the United States. Urban Air’s headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas. Altitude Trampoline Park’s headquarters is in Fort Worth, Texas. The largest reported jury verdict against a U.S. commercial trampoline park — Cosmic Jump’s $11.485 million Harris County award — happened in Houston. The Texas Supreme Court issued the most-watched 2025 trampoline-park arbitration ruling — Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air, LLC, No. 24-0273 (May 23, 2025) — in a case that originated in the Houston metro. Whatever your trampoline-park search begins with — a chain, an injury, a state-law question — the answer almost always passes through Texas.

The Manginello Law Firm operates from three Texas offices. Our main office is in Houston at 1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, Texas 77027. Our secondary Houston location sits at 1635 Dunlavy Street, Houston, Texas 77006. Our Austin office is at 316 West 12th Street, Suite 311, Austin, Texas 78701. Our Beaumont presence is by appointment for the Jefferson County and Golden Triangle markets. We handle cases statewide — and nationally where the facts and the contingency-fee economics warrant.

Houston metro — Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Galveston, Brazoria

The Houston metro contains the densest concentration of commercial trampoline parks in Texas — easily thirty or more in active operation across Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Galveston, and Brazoria counties. Urban Air operates approximately ten Houston-area locations including Heights (2737 Minimax Street), Bay Area in Webster (20251 Gulf Freeway), Humble (19304 Highway 59 North), Katy (25307 Kingsland Boulevard, opening), Northwest Houston / Cypress (20502 Hempstead Road), Pasadena (3838 Fairway Plaza Drive), Pearland (3207 South Sam Houston Parkway East), Spring (20100 Holzwarth Road), Sugar Land (9848 US 90 ALT) — the Lakhani case site — and The Woodlands / Shenandoah (17943 North Freeway Frontage Road). Altitude Trampoline Park operates Sugar Land (4550 Highway 6 South), Spring/Klein (4740 Spring Cypress Road), and Webster (20810 Gulf Freeway). Sky Zone is expanding aggressively across the Houston market with Baytown, Cypress/Copperfield, and Spring/The Woodlands. Launch Family Entertainment operates West Houston (13331 Westheimer Road, the only Houston-metro park with a full-service Krave bar). Jumping World operates Northwest Houston (14147 Northwest Freeway) and Sharpstown (6904 Southwest Freeway). Cosmic Air — the operator behind the historical Cosmic Jump location and the defendant in the $11.485 million Harris County verdict — operates Katy (1210 Fry Road), Humble (256 FM 1960 Bypass Road East), and Webster. Big Air North Houston (3040 FM 1960 Road East) and Get Air Houston add chain density. Independent specialty parks include Flip N’ Fun Center (5379 West Richey Road), iRise Trampoline & Fun Park (7885 FM 1960 West), and Sky Sports (14409 Parkhollow Drive). For ninja-course training specifically, Houston is the most decorated market in Texas: Iron Sports (6982 FM 1960 West) has trained more than fifty competitors who advanced to American Ninja Warrior nationals, including Season 12 champion Daniel Gil and multi-season finalist Jody Avila. Sam Sann Warriors in the Memorial / Spring Branch corridor is run by ANW legend Sam Sann and is widely considered the successor flagship to Iron Sports.

Houston-area pediatric catastrophic injury routes overwhelmingly to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Texas Medical Center and to Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, both Level 1 pediatric trauma centers. Both treat, document, and code pediatric trampoline injuries every weekend during peak season. The medical record from those institutions is the foundation of every catastrophic Houston-metro trampoline case our firm handles.

The legal anchor for any Houston case is Cosmic Jump — the largest reported jury verdict against a U.S. commercial trampoline park. The mechanism: a torn trampoline slide approximately five feet above a concrete floor; the slide had been on the park’s inspection log for weeks before sixteen-year-old Max Menchaca fell through it on the first day of summer vacation 2013. The jury found the park grossly negligent under Transportation Insurance Co. v. Moriel, 879 S.W.2d 10 (Tex. 1994), and awarded $5.485 million in compensatory damages plus $6 million in punitive damages. The waiver did not save the park because Texas does not enforce pre-injury releases against gross negligence. Every Houston-area trampoline-park case our firm investigates is screened against the Cosmic Jump pattern: actual prior knowledge of the defect plus failure to remediate plus injury equals gross negligence equals waiver-defeated.

The second Houston anchor is Hamza Lakhani v. Sugar Land Urban Air, LLC, filed in Harris County District Court following the family’s June 4, 2022 visit to the Sugar Land Urban Air at 9848 US 90 ALT. According to the family’s complaint as reported by ABC13 Houston, JAG Law Firm, Abraham Watkins, and Unicourt records, the fourteen-year-old plaintiff was strapped into a climbing-wall harness by a park attendant who never attached the fall-protection equipment. She fell approximately thirty feet. Both ankles fractured. Her spine compressed. The family states that employees refused to help. The family further states that they never signed a waiver. The defendants named include Sugar Land Urban Air, LLC, Pearland Urban Air, LLC, UATP Management LLC, UATP Holdings LLC, and Rockwood Builders. Lakhani is the live Houston-area Urban Air anchor for any case involving a harness attraction or staff-failure-to-attach mechanism.

The third Houston-area anchor is Cerna, as Next Friend of R.W., v. Pearland Urban Air, LLC, No. 24-0273 (Tex. May 23, 2025). The Texas Supreme Court affirmed a Fourteenth Court of Appeals ruling that compelled arbitration of a minor’s claim where the parent had previously signed an Urban Air agreement containing a broad delegation clause assigning scope and arbitrability questions to the arbitrator. The lesson for Texas families is narrow but important: a delegation clause in an Urban Air waiver, signed once, can route subsequent visits’ claims into arbitration. The countermove is also narrow: challenge the delegation clause itself, specifically and separately, as unconscionable under Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. 63 (2010); rely on litigation-conduct waiver under Coppi v. Family Adventures North Jersey, LLC d/b/a Urban Air (N.J. App. Div. 2025) when the defense participates substantially in litigation before moving to compel; and pursue gross-negligence theories that survive arbitration regardless. The Damion Collins v. Urban Air Overland Park, LLC arbitration award of $15.6 million (American Arbitration Association No. 01-22-0001-5781, September 14, 2023) demonstrates that arbitration is not the end of the case — arbitrator Thomas Bender held the signed waiver “NOT legally enforceable” on the basis of “systemic failure to bring necessary information to the patron, and given the recognized risk of serious injury, the failure to timely implement [safety] changes.”

Dallas-Fort Worth metro — Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton

The DFW metro is, in raw count, comparable to Houston in trampoline-park density. It is also the home market of two of the largest commercial trampoline-park franchisors in the country. Urban Air’s corporate headquarters sits at 2350 Airport Freeway in Bedford, Texas, in Tarrant County. Altitude Trampoline Park’s corporate headquarters is in Fort Worth. Tarrant County is what trial lawyers call a chain-HQ jurisdiction — meaning every documented operational failure at any U.S. Urban Air or Altitude park is, in some discovery sense, a Tarrant County document, traceable to Tarrant County personnel.

The DFW Urban Air footprint is the densest in the country: Arlington (1303 North Collins Street), Bedford (2404 Airport Freeway), Denison (3401 Southbend Drive), Denton (2434 South I-35E), Frisco (10570 John W. Elliott Drive), Garland (3046 Lavon Drive), Hudson Oaks (2010 Cinema Drive), Mansfield (989 North Walnut Creek Drive), McKinney (3150 South Hardin Boulevard), Mesquite (3777 Childress Avenue), North Dallas (14902 Preston Road), North Fort Worth (9157 Harmon Road), Rockwall (5757 State Highway 205), Southlake (2201 West Southlake Boulevard) — the location whose Tripadvisor parent reviewer wrote that “employees are specifically instructed by management to NOT call 911” — Southwest Fort Worth (5425 Columbus Trail), and Waxahachie (507 North U.S. Highway 77). Altitude Trampoline Park operates Cedar Hill (112 West Belt Line Road), Richardson (110 West Campbell Road), Fort Worth Cityview (4728 Bryant Irvin Road), and Fort Worth Keller (5650 Kroger Drive). Sky Zone operates Frisco Preston Ridge (3333 Preston Road, opened April 2025), Hurst Fort Worth (900 Northeast Loop 820), and Irving (3823 Irving Mall). Launch operates Lewisville (2460 South Stemmons Freeway). House of Air × Ninja Kidz Action Park in Crowley (320 East Main Street) is co-branded under an official partnership with the Ninja Kidz TV YouTube channel (40 million-plus subscribers) — a marketing-vs.-reality angle worth scrutinizing in any DFW pediatric injury at that location, because the same brand whose social-media content depicts children attempting advanced maneuvers later cites those maneuvers as rule violations. Ninja Kidz Action Park’s North Richland Hills location (8800 North Tarrant Parkway) operates as a pure ninja facility. Ground Control Las Colinas (2000 Marketplace Boulevard, Irving) is the DFW metro’s only flush in-ground trampoline park — a different injury profile from spring-loaded courts because vestibular sensitivity considerations differ. Specialty ninja gyms include SOAR! United (4207 Simonton Road, Dallas), Obstacle Warriors Dallas (4610 McEwen Road, Farmers Branch), and Ninja Nation Murphy (150 East FM 544 Suite A).

The Texas Salter-Harris growth-plate anchor for DFW content is the Flight Deck Fort Worth case. On April 7, 2017, a four-year-old boy was injured when other jumpers were allowed onto the same trampoline despite the park’s posted single-occupancy rule. The child sustained Salter-Harris fractures of the growth-plate areas in both his right tibia and fibula. The boy must see an orthopedic specialist every six months until he turns eighteen and is permanently prohibited from playing sports. The lawsuit, brought by Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner of Houston, sought $1 million in damages. The doctrinal punch is the rule-on-paper-but-not-enforced pattern: the park acknowledged the danger by adopting the rule and then failed to enforce it — textbook gross-negligence-grade conduct.

Pediatric catastrophic injury in DFW typically routes to Children’s Medical Center Dallas in the Park Cities corridor, to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, and in some North Dallas cases to Texas Health Presbyterian or UT Southwestern. Cook Children’s in particular handles a substantial volume of pediatric trampoline-court femur and tibia fractures during peak weekend operating hours.

The Tarrant County jury — historically more conservative than Harris, Travis, or Bexar — is sometimes cited as a reason to consider venue strategy. Our firm’s view, and it is a non-negotiable view: venue tactics are courtroom decisions made at intake. They have nothing to do with where Texas families need answers about trampoline-park safety. Tarrant County families are entitled to the same depth of representation as Harris County families, and the operational documents that drive catastrophic-injury accountability in any DFW case originate at the Urban Air HQ in Grapevine and the Altitude HQ in Fort Worth — meaning the discoverable evidence chain runs through Tarrant regardless of where the case is filed.

Austin metro — Travis, Williamson, Hays

The Austin metro market has expanded sharply in the last five years and is set to expand further in 2026. Urban Air operates Austin / Cedar Park (13201 North Ranch Road 620), South Austin (4500 South Pleasant Valley Road), Bee Cave (3944 Ranch Road 620 South), Bryan (1758 Briarcrest Drive), Killeen (2102 Jennifer Drive), and Waco (5701 West Waco Drive). Altitude operates South Austin / West Gate (6800 West Gate Boulevard) and Round Rock (2800 South Interstate 35). Sky Zone Cedar Park at 1611 Scottsdale Drive is the chain’s first Austin-area park, with grand opening confirmed for 2025. Launch Family Entertainment has announced expansions in Buda, Cedar Park, and Round Rock. Ninja Nation Austin at 6500 North Lamar Boulevard is the chain’s largest Texas facility at 16,000 square feet, founded as a Colorado-based franchise dedicated specifically to kid ninja-warrior training. Move Sport Ninja Academy in Pflugerville (16808 Joe Barbee Drive) is owned and operated by Andy Lowes, a seven-time American Ninja Warrior finalist and former professional gymnastics coach. Austin Ninjas, formerly at 6001 West Parmer Lane, closed as of March 2026 — a useful data point for any case involving a closed predecessor operator. Jump Party USA and Airtopia have rotated through the Austin and Kyle markets.

Austin’s pediatric trauma routing is to Dell Children’s Medical Center at 4900 Mueller Boulevard in north-central Austin — the region’s Level 1 pediatric trauma center. Dell Children’s is one of the most-cited pediatric facilities in Texas trampoline-injury medical records.

The Austin demographic profile drives content unique to this metro. Austin is a high-tech, high-income, high-litigation-awareness market — a market where “I signed the waiver, so I have no case” is more readily questioned than in some other Texas metros. Austin is also a SXSW market and a Rodeo Houston spillover market for Spring break weekends. Austin’s competitive ninja and gymnastics culture — driven in part by the University of Texas at Austin’s recreational programming and by the dense youth-club network in Williamson County — produces a higher-than-average trampoline-park exposure rate per capita. Move Sport Pflugerville, Iron Sports Houston, and Sam Sann Warriors all draw Austin-metro athletes for high-level training, and any catastrophic injury at one of those specialty facilities carries an elevated standard-of-care argument that we deploy aggressively.

The Austin venue is itself a plaintiff asset. Travis County juries have demonstrated a willingness to hold corporate defendants accountable in catastrophic-injury cases. The Texas Tort Claims Act exposure for any case arising at a school or municipal venue is governed in Travis County by the District Clerk’s office and the Travis County District Courts, both of which our firm appears in.

San Antonio metro — Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe

The San Antonio metro is the Texas trampoline market with the most pronounced bilingual demographic. Bexar County’s Hispanic population — concentrated heavily in the Southside, the Westside, and the Universal City corridor — produces a customer base for which the standard English-language kiosk waiver presented at check-in raises distinct legal questions under Delfingen US-Texas, L.P. v. Valenzuela, 407 S.W.3d 791 (Tex. App. — El Paso 2013, no pet.) and Texas Family Code § 153.073’s signer-authority requirement.

Urban Air operates five San Antonio locations: Bulverde, Northeast San Antonio (8490 Fourwinds Drive), Northwest San Antonio (11791 Bandera Road), Park North (618 Northwest Loop 410, temporarily closed per official Urban Air listing), South San Antonio (165 Southwest Military Drive), and New Braunfels (604 South Walnut Avenue). Altitude San Antonio (11075 Interstate 10 West, Suite 126) advertises 30,000 square feet, more than 150 trampolines, a 30-foot climbing wall, an aerial ropes course, and a published sensory-friendly calendar. The Rush Fun Park — a San Antonio-headquartered chain — operates three Bexar locations: Huebner (14610 Huebner Road), South San Antonio (114 Southwest Military Drive), and Universal City (3150 Pat Booker Road). Airtopia Adventure Park sits at 16628 San Pedro Avenue. Ground Control San Antonio (9870 Marbach Road) is the metro’s only flush in-ground trampoline park.

The San Antonio Texas appellate anchor is Bite Entertainment, LLC d/b/a Urban Air South San Antonio v. Trevino, No. 04-23-00146-CV (Tex. App. — San Antonio [4th Dist.] 2024), part of the same Texas appellate cluster on Urban Air arbitration that produced Cerna in the Texas Supreme Court and Beaumont Adventure Park v. Geter, No. 14-23-00850-CV (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] September 12, 2024) in the Houston-area appellate cluster. The combined effect is a defined Texas appellate posture on Urban Air arbitration enforcement that any San Antonio Urban Air case must address head-on.

San Antonio’s pediatric catastrophic routing is to University Hospital in the Medical Center area — the regional Level 1 pediatric trauma center. Methodist Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of San Antonio also handle pediatric emergency volume.

The Bexar County jury reputation for personal-injury cases is plaintiff-friendly relative to Tarrant or Collin. The bilingual character of the venue makes it a strong forum for cases turning on Delfingen-grade waiver-formation challenges, on grandparent or aunt or family-friend non-guardian signature defenses under § 153.073, and on the multi-generational quinceañera and birthday-party fact patterns endemic to Bexar’s social fabric.

El Paso metro — far West Texas

El Paso is a unique Texas market: Hispanic-majority by a wide margin, plaintiff-favorable in jury composition, and home to the appellate court that decided the seminal Delfingen case in 2013. El Paso families bring distinct strengths to any trampoline-park case involving English-only waiver presentation.

Sky Zone operates El Paso East at 1691 North Zaragoza Road and El Paso West at 4585 Ripley Drive — both rebranded from former Rockin’ Jump locations. The rebrand creates an evidence-bridge issue our firm specifically targets: pre-rebrand surveillance archives, incident-report formats, and kiosk waiver versions are still discoverable from the predecessor entity, and a continuous-operation case can plead both eras. Urban Air operates West El Paso (801 South Mesa Hills Drive). Jumping World operates 5850 Onix Drive in El Paso, with the El Paso location adding the chain’s signature JW Bar & Grill. Helium Trampoline Park has expanded into El Paso as well.

El Paso pediatric catastrophic injury routes typically to El Paso Children’s Hospital at 4845 Alameda Avenue, the region’s pediatric specialty center, and to The Hospitals of Providence Memorial Campus.

The Delfingen doctrine specifically — that a Texas court was justified in denying enforcement of an arbitration agreement where the employer did not provide a Spanish translation and the employee lacked English literacy — was decided by the Eighth Court of Appeals sitting in El Paso. Cases brought in El Paso County District Courts are filed in the same appellate jurisdiction that produced the controlling authority, and El Paso juries are demographically aligned with the kind of bilingual-formation fact patterns trampoline-park kiosk waivers routinely produce. Our firm deploys this doctrine aggressively in El Paso, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Bexar, and anywhere in Texas where the client’s primary language is Spanish and the waiver was presented in English by a teenage attendant on an iPad with a line of children waiting.

Beaumont and the Golden Triangle — Jefferson, Orange, Hardin

Beaumont is the smallest of our three office markets but it carries a venue weight disproportionate to its size. Jefferson County juries have a long-documented reputation for plaintiff-favorable verdicts in catastrophic-injury cases — the so-called “Beaumont factor” in Texas trial-lawyer parlance. The Golden Triangle’s industrial economy, refinery culture, and labor-organized history produce a jury pool more receptive than most Texas counties to corporate-accountability arguments, particularly when a national chain like Sky Zone, Urban Air, or Altitude is the defendant.

Urban Air operates Beaumont at 6250 Eastex Freeway. Jumping World operates Beaumont at 2651 South 11th Street. The Beaumont market is small in operator count but tactically important because of the Texas appellate ruling Beaumont Adventure Park Urban Air, LLC v. Geter (as Next Friend of K.G., a Minor), No. 14-23-00850-CV (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] September 12, 2024) — a case arising from a March 19, 2021 incident at the Beaumont Urban Air dodgeball section in which a four-year-old was injured. The Fourteenth Court of Appeals reversed the trial court and compelled arbitration as to Urban Air on direct-benefits-estoppel grounds, while affirming that claims against non-signatory defendants (manufacturers, the franchisor, individual owners Rachelle Nurse-Goodly and Joseph Goodly) stay in court. The Geter rule is the live Texas direct-benefits-estoppel authority and any post-2024 case involving an Urban Air minor plaintiff in any Houston-area appellate district must plead around it carefully — typically by naming non-signatory defendants on whom no estoppel argument can run.

Beaumont pediatric catastrophic injury routes to Christus Southeast Texas Hospital and to Children’s Hospital of Texas (formerly known under several local affiliations) — and for the most severe cases, to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston via medical helicopter or Children’s Memorial Hermann via interstate transfer.

Corpus Christi and Coastal Bend — Nueces, San Patricio, Aransas

Urban Air operates Corpus Christi at 4701 South Staples Street. Jumping World operates Corpus Christi at 1601 Flour Bluff Drive. The Coastal Bend pediatric catastrophic route is to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, a Level 2 pediatric trauma center serving South Texas. The Nueces County jury is plaintiff-favorable; the bilingual demographic in the metro and in surrounding counties makes Delfingen-grade waiver-formation challenges relevant in many Coastal Bend cases.

Rio Grande Valley — Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr, Willacy, Webb (Laredo)

The Rio Grande Valley is the most plaintiff-favorable Texas region for trampoline-park catastrophic-injury cases involving Hispanic families. Hidalgo, Cameron, and Webb counties produce juries demographically aligned with the bilingual-formation, signer-authority, and multi-generational fact patterns that defeat trampoline-park waiver enforcement.

Urban Air operates Harlingen (2020 South Expressway 83), Laredo (6310 McPherson Road), and McAllen (3300 West Frontage Road). Xtreme Jump — headquartered in San Benito (900 West Highway 77) — operates McAllen, San Benito, and Harlingen, with a 60,000-square-foot Temple flagship outside the RGV. Get Air Brownsville is off Boca Chica Boulevard. Helium Trampoline Park (801 West Dove Avenue, McAllen) and Sky Park Kids (4801 Colbath Avenue, McAllen) round out the McAllen-area independent landscape.

RGV pediatric catastrophic injury typically routes to Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg or to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, with the most severe cases transported to Driscoll Corpus Christi or Texas Children’s Houston.

Our firm’s Spanish-language depth, anchored by Lupe Peña, is the operational difference for RGV families. Lupe handles Spanish directly — no interpreters, no translators, no delays. The bilingual-formation defense under Delfingen stacks naturally with the signer-authority defense under Texas Family Code § 153.073 for the routine RGV fact pattern of an aunt, grandmother, or older sibling signing a waiver at a quinceañera or birthday-party buyout while the legal guardian was elsewhere. Three independent attack vectors — bilingual formation, non-guardian signer, and gross-negligence carve-out under Moriel — converge in nearly every RGV case our firm screens.

Midland-Odessa and the Permian Basin

The Permian Basin’s trampoline-park footprint is small but legally consequential. Altitude Odessa at 5161 East 42nd Street is the defendant in the published Shawn Parker case, in which the petition specifically alleged that what was advertised as a foam pit was, at the time of injury, “instead of having a trampoline at the bottom, it merely had a dense foam pad.” Shawn Parker’s tibia and fibula fractured. The case anchors any Permian foam-pit content. Urban Air operates Midland (4706 North Midkiff Road, Suite 1) and Odessa (4101 East 42nd Street). Legacy Extreme Midland (5606 Starboard Drive) is an independent that operates with full-service bar service and VR sports simulators — a fact pattern raising distinct dram-shop and adult-supervised premises-liability theories.

Midland-Odessa pediatric catastrophic injury typically routes to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa or Midland Memorial Hospital for stabilization, with severe cases transported to Cook Children’s Fort Worth, Children’s Medical Center Dallas, or Texas Children’s Houston via helicopter or fixed-wing aeromedical services. The distance from a Permian Basin park to a Level 1 pediatric trauma center is itself a damages factor in any catastrophic case — the EMS response and inter-facility transport delays compound the injury.

Lubbock and West Texas Panhandle

Lubbock’s trampoline-park market includes MaxxAir Lubbock (an approximately 30,000-square-foot independent), TexStar Athletics at 5505 132nd Street, and Adrenaline City at 5402 4th Street inside the Bodyworks Fitness facility. TexStar Athletics is run by Dawn Murphy, who has more than thirty years of coaching experience including service as a USA Tumbling coach; TexStar is the only USAG-affiliated trampoline and tumbling gym in the Lubbock region and the deepest competitive pedigree in West Texas. Urban Air operates Amarillo (7701 Interstate 40), Wichita Falls (2505 Kemp Boulevard), Midland, Odessa, and other regional parks.

Pediatric catastrophic injury in Lubbock routes to University Medical Center on 4th Street — the region’s Level 1 trauma center serving Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center pediatric specialists.

Tyler and East Texas

iJump Tyler at 2029 Capital Drive is East Texas’s largest specialty jump park at 25,000 square feet, with elevated ninja course, rock wall, and full trampoline floor. Urban Air operates Tyler at 8958 South Broadway Avenue. Hijinx Trampoline Park serves Lufkin at 161 Jump Street. iJump / GJump Texarkana at 4212 Saint Michael Drive serves Northeast Texas. Pediatric catastrophic injury in Tyler routes to UT Health East Texas Tyler and to Christus Trinity Mother Frances; transport to Children’s Medical Center Dallas or Cook Children’s Fort Worth is routine for the most severe cases.

Killeen, Waco, Temple, and Bryan-College Station — Central Texas

Xtreme Jump Temple at 3111 South 31st Street is the chain’s flagship and the largest specialty jump facility in Central Texas at 60,000 square feet. Urban Air operates Killeen, Waco, and Bryan. Jumping World operates Bryan at 3143 Wildflower Drive. Pediatric catastrophic injury in Central Texas routes to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center — Temple, and the most severe cases transport to Dell Children’s Austin or Cook Children’s Fort Worth.

Other Texas regions

Abilene’s Formula Fun Adventure Park & Racing at 949 South Judge Ely Boulevard rebranded from Maxx Air in 2024 and added a full go-kart attraction — the only Abilene-metro park with that combination. The rebrand creates the same evidence-bridge issue we target at El Paso Sky Zone (formerly Rockin’ Jump). San Angelo has Ultimate Air Trampoline Park at 4169 West Loop 306. The Wichita Falls and Amarillo markets are served primarily by Urban Air. Each of these smaller markets matters: a child injured in Abilene, San Angelo, Amarillo, or Wichita Falls has the same right to representation as a child injured in the Texas Medical Center, and our firm handles statewide.

How geography shapes a case

The metro a case arises in shapes the strategy in three concrete ways.

The pediatric trauma center. The standard of care in the trauma bay is the benchmark against which a child’s treatment is later measured. Texas Children’s Hospital, Cook Children’s, Dell Children’s, University Hospital San Antonio, El Paso Children’s, Driscoll, and Children’s Medical Center Dallas each have institutional treatment protocols, attending-physician rosters, and discharge documentation conventions our firm knows from years of catastrophic-injury work in those facilities. Where the child was treated determines which institutional medical experts are available to support the case.

The venue’s jury composition. Harris County, Travis County, Bexar County, Jefferson County, El Paso County, and the Rio Grande Valley counties (Hidalgo, Cameron, Webb) historically produce plaintiff-favorable verdicts in catastrophic-injury cases. Tarrant County, Collin County, Denton County, Williamson County, and Montgomery County are demographically more conservative. None of these reputations are dispositive — the Cosmic Jump verdict was a Harris County result, but Texas history also includes substantial plaintiff verdicts from Tarrant, Dallas, and Travis. Our firm files where the cause of action accrued under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 15.002, considers federal diversity strategy where defendants are non-Texas LLCs or out-of-state corporations, and never lets venue concerns reduce the depth of representation any Texas family receives.

The local operator inventory. Houston families face Cosmic Air, Urban Air, Altitude, Sky Zone, Launch, Big Air, Get Air, Jumping World, House of Air, and Iron Sports. DFW families face Urban Air-headquartered Tarrant County density, Altitude HQ exposure, Sky Zone, House of Air × Ninja Kidz, Ground Control flush in-ground, and the Flight Deck Fort Worth growth-plate precedent. Austin families face Urban Air, Altitude, Sky Zone Cedar Park, Ninja Nation, and Move Sport. San Antonio families face Urban Air × 5, Altitude, The Rush, Airtopia, and Ground Control. El Paso, RGV, Permian, Lubbock, and East Texas families each face their own constrained but litigated operator landscape. Every local operator has its own liability insurance posture, its own franchise structure, its own defense counsel network, and its own pre-litigation history. Our firm pulls Franchise Disclosure Documents, public docket histories, OSHA records, and state-regulator inspection histories for every operator named in any case we screen.

Why no Texas park can claim surprise — the foreseeability stack

The single most important argument in any trampoline-park case is foreseeability. Every chain — Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude, DEFY, Launch, Rockin’ Jump — and every component manufacturer knew, or should have known, the specific injury patterns this guide describes. They knew because the medical literature has been clear for a quarter century, because the federal government has tracked the data for half a century, because the international community has codified mandatory standards while the United States runs on a voluntary regime, and because the trampoline-park industry wrote its own safety standard and then routinely operates below it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned since 1999

The American Academy of Pediatrics first issued a formal trampoline-injury policy statement in 1977. The Committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness expanded that warning in 1999 in a major policy statement titled “Trampolines at Home, School, and Recreational Centers.” The 1999 statement recommended that trampolines not be used at home, that they not be used in routine physical-education classes, that constant adult supervision be required when used at all, that one person at a time use the trampoline, that somersaults and flips be prohibited absent professional coaching, that padding cover springs and frames, and that adequate impact-absorbing surface lie beneath. The Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness reaffirmed and expanded those positions in 2012 in a statement titled “Trampoline Safety in Childhood and Adolescence,” which added the explicit observation that net enclosures do not adequately reduce the risk of catastrophic injury — directly undermining the manufacturer defense that “we have a net” eliminates the hazard. The AAP updated its guidance again in 2019 specifically cautioning against commercial trampoline-park use by young children. That is twenty-six-plus years of organized pediatric medical consensus that no commercial chain in Texas, no manufacturer in the residential market, and no homeowner buying a backyard trampoline can credibly claim ignorance of.

ASTM F381 and ASTM F2970 — the industry wrote the standards itself

ASTM F381 is the standard safety specification for components, assembly, use, and labeling of consumer (residential) trampolines. It bars children under six from trampoline use, requires single-jumper operation, prohibits routine flipping, mandates spring and frame padding, requires adequate impact-absorbing surfaces beneath the equipment, and dictates net enclosure specifications when nets are equipped. F381 also requires the access ladder to be removed when the trampoline is not in use — a direct anti-attractive-nuisance provision aimed at protecting trespassing children.

ASTM F2970 is the standard practice for design, manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, inspection, and major modification of trampoline courts. It is the standard every commercial Texas trampoline park claims to comply with. The current edition is ASTM F2970-22, with prior editions F2970-13, F2970-15, F2970-17, and F2970-20 each remaining operative for incidents occurring during their effective periods. F2970 specifies attendant-to-jumper ratios, attendant training and qualifications, age and weight separation, foam-pit depth and foam-block density, airbag inflation pressure and sensor systems, daily and shift inspection cadence, monthly and quarterly deep-inspection requirements, jumper rules communication, pre-jump safety briefing requirements, incident reporting documentation, emergency response protocols, and operator record retention. The standard was authored by ASTM Committee F08 Subcommittee F08.17 — a body composed of trampoline-park industry representatives, equipment manufacturers, safety consultants, and a small number of medical and legal stakeholders. The trampoline-park industry wrote its own safety standard. When a Texas park violates F2970, it violates a standard its own peers drafted to establish a safety floor. That is foreseeability written into the case.

EN ISO 23659:2022 — the international standard the United States doesn’t have

On November 30, 2022, the International Organization for Standardization published EN ISO 23659:2022, titled Sports and recreational facilities — Trampoline parks — Safety requirements. The international standard is mandatory across most of Europe. It covers design, construction, inspection, maintenance, and operation of commercial trampoline parks, and it explicitly addresses airbags and foam pits. EN ISO 23659:2022 replaces the United Kingdom’s PAS 5000:2017. Australia mandates AS 4989:2015 for trampolines and AS 5159.1:2018 for inflatable amusement devices. The United States is the only major developed economy without a binding national trampoline-park safety standard. ASTM F2970-22 is voluntary in thirty-nine states, including Texas. ASTM F2970 has been incorporated by reference into state regulation in only ten states: Colorado (Division of Oil and Public Safety, 7 CCR 1101-12), Georgia (State Fire Marshal, adopted 2014), Illinois (IDOL Carnival/Amusement Ride Safety Bureau), Massachusetts (520 CMR 5.00 under the Department of Public Safety), New Jersey (Department of Community Affairs Carnival-Amusement Ride Safety Advisory Board), New York (Department of Labor plus General Business Law Article 12-C effective April 18, 2020), North Carolina (Department of Labor), Ohio (Department of Agriculture, ORC §§ 1711.50-99), Tennessee (Department of Labor — Amusement Device Unit), and Wisconsin (Department of Safety and Professional Services). Arizona, California, Florida, Maryland, and Minnesota have partial adoption. Texas does not adopt F2970. The Texas regulatory gap is the strongest single negligence anchor in any Texas trampoline-park content. Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude, DEFY, and Launch operate to a floor the rest of the developed world treats as a ceiling.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has tracked trampoline injuries for half a century

The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission regulates consumer trampoline products, issues recalls and safety alerts, and operates the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). CPSC NEISS data show approximately 300,000 trampoline-related emergency-department visits per year in the United States. Trampoline-park-specific ER volume rose from approximately 2,500 in 2013 to approximately 17,898 in 2017 — a sevenfold increase in four years. In summer 2023 alone (June–August), approximately 26,000 child trampoline-related ER visits were reported per a SafeHome.org analysis of NEISS data. The CPSC has issued safety alerts on trampolines dating to the 1970s. The CPSC’s role is unmistakable: every chain operator and every manufacturer in Texas knew the federal data. The federal data show trampoline injuries are a public-health category, not a freak-accident category. The “we had no idea this was dangerous” defense is dead on arrival.

Teague et al., Pediatrics (AAP), January 2024 — the current peer-reviewed benchmark

The most-current peer-reviewed exposure-adjusted epidemiology of trampoline-park injuries is Teague et al., “Trampoline Park Injury Trends,” Pediatrics, Vol. 153 Issue 1, e2023061659 (January 2024). The study cohort was 13,256 injured trampoline-park users from 8,387,178 jumper-hours — the single largest exposure-adjusted dataset on commercial trampoline-park injury yet published. Key rates from the Teague study: overall injury rate 1.14 per 1,000 jumper-hours; foam-pit and inflatable-bag injury rate 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours; high-performance jumping injury rate 2.11 per 1,000 jumper-hours; “significant” injury rate 0.11 per 1,000 jumper-hours; eleven percent of all injuries were classified significant. The Teague paper’s interpretive frame was industry-friendly — claiming injuries are declining in standard-compliant parks — but the raw rates are what the literature now supports. Translated to a busy Texas park hosting 500 jumpers a day on a summer Saturday, the foam-pit rate predicts approximately one foam-pit injury per day of operation. Most are minor. Some are catastrophic. The park does not advertise the rate.

AJR / R3J 2024 — pediatric trampoline injuries head to toe

“Pediatric Trampoline Injuries From Head to Toe,” American Journal of Roentgenology (R3 Journal), 2024 — a pictorial radiographic essay presented at the American Roentgen Ray Society 2024 Annual Meeting in Boston — established that up to 1.6 percent of pediatric emergency-department trauma visits are trampoline-related. The same paper documents the radiographic signatures of vertebral artery dissection, atlanto-axial subluxation, proximal tibial metaphyseal buckle fractures (the so-called “trampoline fracture” classic in children ages 2–5), sternal fractures, and the standard pediatric orthopedic injury pattern. The 1.6 percent number is the answer to any “is this really common?” parent question.

The peer-reviewed literature stack

The medical literature on trampoline-park injury spans more than a decade of peer-reviewed publication. The literature stack our firm cites in catastrophic cases includes Kasmire et al. 2016 (the longitudinal anchor — pediatric trampoline-park injury trends, demonstrating that commercial-park injuries are 2 to 3 times more likely to require hospital admission than backyard injuries), Eager 2012 (foam-pit biomechanics; energy transfer; cervical compression mechanism), Teague et al. 2024 (current exposure-adjusted rates), AJR 2024 (radiographic encyclopedia), PMC11687177 (pediatric hospitalization due to trampoline-related injuries 2019), MDPI Medicina 2023 (mid-thoracic vertebral compression fracture from mini-trampoline use, seven-patient case series), and PMC10270429 (trampoline-associated cranial and spinal injuries, 10-year review). The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Position Statement 1135 — Trampolines and Trampoline Safety — provides the orthopedic-society professional complement to the AAP’s pediatric position. A defense expert may attack any single source. A defense expert cannot attack a twelve-source convergent literature stack spanning two decades and three medical specialties.

The 2023 Texas legislative inaction

In the 2023 Texas legislative session — the 88th Legislature — two trampoline-park regulation bills were introduced. Both died in committee. As reported by WFAA Dallas-Fort Worth, KHOU Houston, and trampolineparklawsuits.com, the proposed bills would have established statewide inspection and reporting requirements modeled loosely on New York’s General Business Law Article 12-C. The Texas Department of Insurance does regulate Class B inflatable amusement rides under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 — covering bungee trampolines, inflatable obstacle courses, Sky Rider zip-coasters, and inflatable slides inside trampoline parks. But Texas Occupations Code § 2151.002(1)(C)(iv) explicitly excludes the trampoline deck itself from amusement-ride regulation. The result: Texas has no state-level trampoline-park safety act, no state inspection of trampoline courts, no required injury reporting from operators, no minimum liability-insurance requirement specific to the industry, and no statutory anti-waiver provision. New York requires $500,000 in minimum liability coverage per occurrence, has a statutory anti-waiver provision under New York General Obligations Law § 5-326, and mandates state-permitted annual inspection. Utah’s Trampoline Park Safety Act (Title 11, Chapter 63, effective May 14, 2019) requires CPR-certified staff on-site and an operable AED during all operating hours. Texas families operate without those protections.

The trampoline-park insurance market knows

The single most reliable indicator of how dangerous the industry is sits in the property and casualty insurance market. Philadelphia Insurance Companies exited the commercial trampoline-park segment around 2016–2017. K&K Insurance, a major specialty carrier, imposed reduced sub-limits on foam-pit and dodgeball claims. Trampoline-park commercial general liability premiums reportedly rose 200 to 400 percent between 2015 and 2022. Typical primary policy limits today run $1 million per occurrence to $2 million aggregate — a fraction of the lifetime cost of a single pediatric cervical spinal cord injury, which the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center documents at $5 million or more in lifetime medical and attendant-care costs. Common contemporary coverage exclusions include foam-pit exclusions, flip and somersault exclusions, dodgeball exclusions, participant-versus-participant exclusions, and in some endorsements absolute trampoline exclusions — meaning the very activity the park sells is exempted from the policy patrons are told covers them. The Urban Air Port St. Lucie Florida franchisee that operated the park where six-year-old Emma Riddle died in December 2025 was reportedly $270,000 in arrears on rent and $83,000 in arrears on tax according to WPTV reporting — a franchisee-insolvency signal indicating that the trampoline-park insurance market is in stress.

The corporate consolidation

The U.S. trampoline-park industry consolidated sharply in 2023. Effective January 1, 2023, CircusTrix LLC changed its name to Sky Zone, Inc. Sky Zone, Inc. now parents the Sky Zone, DEFY, and Rockin’ Jump brands as sister chains under one corporate roof. Palladium Equity Partners has been the ultimate private-equity owner of that corporate entity continuously since 2018, when Palladium-backed CircusTrix acquired Sky Zone. Sky Zone, Inc.’s 2024 systemwide sales reportedly grew 27.3 percent to $642 million per Franchise Times Top 400. On February 7, 2023, Seidler Equity Partners acquired Unleashed Brands — the parent of Urban Air — from prior owners including MPK Partners. Franchise Times’ headline at the time of the acquisition: “Seidler Equity Buys Unleashed Brands AMID LAWSUITS Aimed at Kid-Focused Franchisor.” Unleashed Brands’ portfolio includes Urban Air Adventure Park, Snapology, The Little Gym, XP League, Class 101, Premier Martial Arts, and Sylvan Learning (acquired February 2024). Altitude Trampoline Park is privately held with corporate parent ATP Alpha and franchisor entity Altitude Franchise Holdings. Launch Entertainment was founded in Warwick, Rhode Island in 2012 by Rob and Erin Arnold and operates 28-plus parks nationally under Launch Franchise Holdings. The defendant your firm names in a Texas trampoline-park case is rarely a single company. It is a layered corporate structure designed to route revenue upstream while isolating liability exposure at the undercapitalized local operator. The money is upstream. We go upstream.

How trampoline park accidents actually happen

Every catastrophic trampoline-park injury has a name. It has a physics. It has an ASTM provision the park violated to produce it. It has a documented public-record case our firm — and any attorney evaluating your case — uses as the doctrinal anchor. The defense’s standard move is to frame every injury as a “freak accident” or as an “inherent risk.” Our job is to show that every mechanism below has a named pattern, a known frequency, a written safety standard that addresses it, and a defendant that failed to follow the standard.

Double-bounce collision — the signature trampoline-park injury

The double-bounce mechanism is the single most-studied trampoline injury in the medical literature. Two jumpers on the same trampoline bed bounce out of phase. When the heavier jumper lands while the lighter jumper is pushing off, the bed stores elastic potential energy from the heavier jumper’s landing compression. If the lighter jumper is in the push-off phase at that exact moment, the stored energy transfers through the bed and adds to the lighter jumper’s own upward momentum. At a 3-to-1 weight ratio — for example, a 200-pound adult and a 60- to 70-pound child — the child’s launch force can multiply by approximately 3 to 4 times. The child is no longer jumping. The child is being thrown. The smaller jumper is, per the Nysted and Drogset 2006 work in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and per the AAP’s 2012 reaffirmation, approximately fourteen times more likely to be injured than the heavier jumper sharing the same bed.

The injuries: tibia and fibula shaft fractures (the lower extremity simply cannot absorb the landing); pediatric femur fractures (notoriously catastrophic at this mechanism); Salter-Harris growth-plate fractures, particularly in the distal tibia; cervical spine hyperflexion or hyperextension injuries; traumatic brain injury from head-first landing or from head-to-head collision with the other jumper.

The ASTM F2970 violation: age and weight separation provisions. F2970 requires commercial parks to operationalize separation between jumpers of significantly different sizes and developmental levels because the standard’s own authors recognized the double-bounce mechanism. The standard also requires attendant supervision sufficient to intervene when weight-mismatched jumpers begin to bounce together, and at many parks the standard further requires single-jumper-per-section enforcement. When a park’s monitor sits at one corner of a court watching three children jump while a 200-pound parent enters the same bed to take a video for social media, F2970 is being violated in real time.

The Texas anchor: the Flight Deck Fort Worth four-year-old case. April 7, 2017. Four-year-old boy on a Flight Deck trampoline. The park had a posted single-occupancy rule. Other jumpers were allowed onto the same trampoline. The recoil from those jumpers’ rebounds propelled the four-year-old into the air. He lost control of his body in mid-air and was slammed back down on the bed, severely injuring his right leg. Diagnosis: Salter-Harris fractures of the growth-plate areas in both his right tibia and fibula. Lifetime consequences: multiple surgeries to date; orthopedic specialist visit every six months until age eighteen; permanent prohibition from playing sports. The lawsuit, brought by Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner of Houston, sought $1 million in damages. The doctrinal punch is the rule-on-paper-but-not-enforced pattern: Flight Deck adopted the rule, then failed to enforce it. That is gross negligence in Texas under Moriel.

The California double-bounce anchor is Donovan / Jennifer Segura at Rockin’ Jump Dublin, California. A five-year-old boy was injured when a middle-school-aged child began bouncing next to him, causing the five-year-old to lose his balance and strike a hard padded area. He sustained a broken leg and underwent a year of rehabilitation. The case is documented by Penney & Associates.

Solo flip and somersault injury — the spinal-cord-injury mechanism

A single jumper attempts a flip, somersault, or acrobatic maneuver. Rotational momentum is over- or underestimated. The jumper lands on the head, neck, or upper back instead of the feet. The injury patterns: cervical spine hyperflexion-on-landing — the most catastrophic outcome, with potential for ASIA Impairment Scale Grade A through C cervical spinal cord injury and tetraplegia; spinal cord ischemic injury; vertebral artery dissection (covered separately below); diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury; dental and facial fractures; shoulder dislocation with Bankart and Hill-Sachs lesions.

The standard violated: ASTM F2970 jumper-rules-communication and attendant-training provisions. F2970 — and the AAP policy statements of 1999, 2012, and 2019 — explicitly prohibit routine flipping outside of supervised professional training environments. F2970 classifies flips and somersaults as “Advanced Skills” to be performed only in designated Advanced Skill zones, under instructor supervision, by jumpers who have been specifically trained to perform them. An open-jump court on a Saturday afternoon at a Sky Zone or Urban Air or Altitude in Texas is not an Advanced Skill zone. When a teenage monitor permits or even encourages flips on a public court — and signage warning against flips is the only purported barrier — the standard’s authors did not contemplate enforcement looking like that.

The Kansas anchor is Damion Collins v. Urban Air Overland Park, LLC. Adult plaintiff at a “Wipe-Out” attraction during a July 2021 birthday party at Urban Air Overland Park. Collins attempted a backflip and came down on his neck. He sustained quadriplegia. The case proceeded to AAA arbitration No. 01-22-0001-5781 before arbitrator Thomas Bender, who issued his award September 14, 2023. Gross arbitration award approximately $19.5 million, reduced 20 percent for comparative fault — net $15.6 million. Allocation: UATP Management LLC (the franchisor) 40 percent; Overland Park Urban Air LLC (the franchisee) 20 percent; UA Attractions LLC (the pass-through manufacturer entity) 20 percent; Urban Air Kansas LLC zero percent; Collins 20 percent. The arbitrator’s signature finding: the signed waiver was “NOT legally enforceable” because “there was a SYSTEMIC FAILURE to bring necessary information to the patron, and given the recognized risk of serious injury, the failure to timely implement [safety] changes resulted in the injuries to Mr. Collins.” The Collins case is the franchisor-on-the-hook anchor for any case involving Urban Air or any chain that operates a “Wipe-Out” or similar triangular-trampoline mechanical attraction. It is also the proof-by-example that arbitration is not the end of the case.

Foam pit catastrophic injury

Foam pits look soft. They are not. The mechanism: a jumper enters the pit head-first or feet-first and sinks toward the hard floor beneath the foam blocks. When foam depth is below ASTM F2970 specification — due to compaction over time, missed rotation cycles, or inadequate initial fill depth — the pit provides insufficient impact absorption. The jumper contacts the hard surface beneath. Outcomes documented in peer-reviewed literature include cervical spine injury on head-first entry (often SCIWORA — Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality — in pediatric victims), vertebral compression fracture, calcaneus (heel bone) fracture on feet-first entry, and facial fractures.

The variant mechanisms: foam-pit submerged-entrapment asphyxia, in which a small child lands deep in a foam pit, foam blocks close over the child, and the child cannot surface — anoxic brain injury or death follows. Jumper-on-jumper collision in the pit, where one jumper enters before the previous jumper has surfaced, producing crush injuries to the submerged jumper and knee/ankle injuries to the entering jumper. Foam-block infection vector — a separate mechanism covered in the infection vertical below.

The foundational foam-pit fatality is Ty Thomasson at SkyPark Indoor Trampoline Park, Phoenix, Arizona, February 2, 2012. Ty Thomasson was 30 years old. SkyPark had been open approximately one week. The mechanism: Thomasson back-flipped from a trampoline into a foam pit. The foam pit was 2 feet 8 inches deep versus the then-recommended approximate 6 feet. He broke five vertebrae in his neck. He died of his injuries. His mother, Maureen Kerley, did not pursue civil suit. She worked with Arizona lawmakers to pass HB 2179 — known as “Ty’s Law” — making Arizona the first state to specifically regulate indoor trampoline parks. Ty’s Law is the foundational regulatory response to the foam-pit catastrophic injury pattern. The internal Attorney911 knowledge base previously listed this incident as occurring at “Sky Zone, Colorado.” That attribution is incorrect. The incident occurred at SkyPark in Phoenix, Arizona; we use only the corrected facts.

The contemporary foam-pit anchor is Anthony Seitz v. AirMaxx Trampoline Park, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Seitz, an adult father from Brainerd, Minnesota, jumped into a foam pit and broke his neck — sustaining cervical spinal cord injury and paralysis. He had signed AirMaxx’s liability waiver. The case settled for $3 million in mediation. The foundation of the case: AirMaxx had actual prior-incident knowledge of guests hitting the bottom of the foam pit and had failed to meet IATP — International Association of Trampoline Parks — safety standards. The waiver was defeated on gross-negligence grounds. AirMaxx’s counsel publicly acknowledged the settlement averted “a trial and a potentially larger award.”

The Texas foam-pit anchor is Shawn Parker v. Altitude Odessa. The petition specifically alleged that what the park advertised as a foam pit was, at the time of injury, “instead of having a trampoline at the bottom, it merely had a dense foam pad.” Tibia and fibula fractured.

The chain-wide foam-pit pattern at Sky Zone is documented in Boston 25 News’ “25 Investigates” series. The investigation documented 224 emergency medical calls at five Massachusetts Sky Zone locations over a seven-year window. Most calls involved injured feet or legs — the same mat-frame and foam-pit injury patterns. A New Jersey plaintiff attorney told Boston 25 he represents seven separate clients injured at Sky Zone parks. Most damaging of all: the investigation surfaced Sky Zone’s internal worker manual instructing employees, “BE AWARE OF THE PADS” — meaning Sky Zone documented the pad and mat-frame hazard in writing for its workers while issuing no equivalent warning to customers. Any case involving a Sky Zone foam pit, mat-frame entrapment, or perimeter-padding failure should specifically demand the internal worker manual in Rule 34 document requests.

Climbing wall, harness failure, and ropes courses

Modern multi-attraction trampoline parks have installed climbing walls — typically 20 to 30 feet, frequently advertised as 30-foot — over what is often unpadded or inadequately padded concrete subfloor. The mechanisms when harness systems fail: failure-to-attach by a teenage attendant who strapped the harness without connecting the fall-protection line; auto-belay malfunction during descent; harness attachment-point failure under load; climber-error fall arrested with high G-load; two-rope-system failure where the spotter is untrained.

The fatality anchor is Matthew Lu at Altitude Trampoline Park, Gastonia, North Carolina, 2019. Twelve-year-old Matthew Lu attended a birthday party at Altitude Gastonia. He scaled the climbing wall. Per the wrongful-death suit filed in Gaston County Superior Court, employees failed to properly secure his harness. He fell over twenty feet onto concrete. Lethal head trauma. Altitude publicly blamed “human error” by an employee and permanently removed the climbing-wall attraction from the Gastonia location. Both statements are admission-grade evidence in any plaintiff’s case at any Altitude location with a similar attraction. The “human error” admission is a pre-litigation statement-against-interest that bypasses Federal Rule of Evidence 407 entirely. The post-incident wall removal is admissible to prove feasibility of safer precautions, ownership and control, and impeachment. The defendants named: Altitude Gastonia, parent ATP Alpha, and Ropes Courses, Inc. — the climbing-wall designer and manufacturer. Ropes Courses, Inc. as a co-defendant is the precedent for naming the ropes-course or climbing-wall manufacturer in any catastrophic case at any chain.

The Texas climbing-wall anchor is Hamza Lakhani v. Sugar Land Urban Air, LLC, discussed above. Fourteen-year-old plaintiff. The harness was strapped on. The fall-protection line was never attached. Approximately a thirty-foot fall. Both ankles broken plus spinal compression. The family states employees refused to help. The family states they never signed a waiver. Defendants include Sugar Land Urban Air LLC, Pearland Urban Air LLC, UATP Management LLC, UATP Holdings LLC, and Rockwood Builders.

The pediatric climbing-wall pattern continues. A seven-year-old at Urban Air Denver “Leap of Faith” fell twenty feet, broke his spine and arm, and the park reportedly failed to report the injury to the Colorado Division of Oil and Public Safety. A ten-year-old at Urban Air “Spy Ninjas HQ” Las Vegas fell twenty feet from a zipline at a birthday party — harness “undone, detached” — and sustained concussion plus multiple broken bones plus a collapsed lung onto unpadded concrete. The chain-wide pattern is admissible foreseeability evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) and its state-law analogues.

Sky Rider zipline strangulation — the recurring Urban Air design defect

“Sky Rider” is Urban Air’s branded indoor zipline-coaster attraction. The public-record incidents documented to date form a chain-wide pattern of strangulation-by-harness-cord and fall-from-height failures.

• Newnan, Georgia, June 27, 2023 — six-year-old girl strangled by the harness cord. Her father climbed approximately twelve feet up the netting himself because no employee intervened.
• Bloomingdale, Illinois — adult mother sued Urban Air after the harness rope tangled around her neck on the Sky Rider.
• Illinois 2022 — three-year-old strangulation incident.
• Reno and Florida, 2019 — Sky Rider fall incidents.
• Las Vegas Spy Ninjas HQ — ten-year-old fall described above.

The mechanism, the pattern, and the chain operator are the same. Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) — and its parallel state-law rules in nearly every jurisdiction — admits prior similar acts to prove notice, knowledge, plan, absence of mistake, and lack of accident. A Sky Rider strangulation case in any Urban Air park anywhere in the country, including any Urban Air park in Texas, is a chain-wide-pattern case. Discovery should subpoena Urban Air’s chain-wide incident history for Sky Rider for at least the preceding 36 to 60 months. The pattern subpoena reaches the franchisor (UATP Management LLC), the pass-through manufacturer entity (UA Attractions LLC), and Unleashed Brands as the corporate parent.

Go-kart fatality at trampoline park — the Emma Riddle mechanism

On December 6, 2025, six-year-old Emma Riddle died from injuries sustained at Urban Air Trampoline & Adventure Park in Port St. Lucie, Florida. According to family attorney Hasty’s reported statements and WPTV / CBS12 / GoldLaw / ABC News coverage, Emma was riding a two-person electric go-kart with her mother. The kart began braking and accelerating erratically, then surged forward at high speed without the mother pressing the accelerator, crashing into the track wall. Emma was unbelted. She was airlifted to HCA Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce and died the following day. Urban Air closed the park pending state and federal investigations. Reporting indicated the franchisee was approximately $270,000 in arrears on rent and approximately $83,000 in arrears on tax — a franchisee insolvency signal we treat as material to any case in which Urban Air’s local LLC is the named defendant.

The Emma Riddle case is the contemporary anchor for an entire emerging litigation category: go-kart attractions inside trampoline parks. Multi-attraction parks have bolted on electric kart tracks under the same waiver, the same minimum-wage attendant supervision, the same insurer, and the same corporate parent. The waiver drafted for trampoline use frequently does not specifically reference go-karts — a scope-of-waiver gap any plaintiff’s counsel exploits. The product-liability theory reaches the kart manufacturer and the supplier of the pedal-throttle electronic control unit. The case is also the contemporary teaching example of the franchisee-insolvency signal: when a chain location is in arrears on rent and tax simultaneously, the operator LLC is rarely the source of recovery. The franchisor, the corporate parent, and the kart manufacturer become the financial path forward.

Net failure, spring strike, and frame contact

The net or enclosure fails under jumper impact. The jumper ejects from the trampoline surface to adjacent ground, concrete, decking, or equipment. Failure modes: anchor-point failure, fabric tear from UV degradation, zipper or access-closure failure, inadequate height, or missing netting from in-progress maintenance with the court still open. Spring and frame strikes — when the jumper’s body contacts the spring, the frame rim, or the gap between bed and frame — produce open fractures, deep lacerations, compartment syndrome from spring-coil compression, tendon laceration, and infection risk from contaminated metal contact. The Texas anchors include the Sky Zone Boston (Wareham, Massachusetts) interconnected-court mat-frame entrapment pattern — extracted from Boston 25’s investigation but applicable to any chain park operating connected courts — and the Vogt v. Rebounderz of Edison, New Jersey $1.25 million settlement for an exposed-springs case where the park was on actual prior-incident notice that uncovered springs were an ongoing issue. The known-hazard-plus-failure-to-fix pattern is the gross-negligence template.

The CA $905,000 anchor is the net-padding-gap entrapment case in which a minor’s leg became caught between the net and the protective padding and the knee struck a frame bolt — producing patellar tendinopathy and patellar nonunion. The mechanism is design-defect-grade and reaches both the operator and the equipment manufacturer.

Cross-court collision and attendant-ignored violations

Adjacent courts separated only by padding produce inter-court collisions when jumpers cross or when high-energy bounces transmit through the shared boundary. The mechanism violates F2970 court-spacing requirements. The attendant-ignored violation pattern — in which a monitor observes a rule violation (age mixing, multi-jumper bouncing on a single section, flip attempt, stunt-feature misuse) and fails to intervene — is itself gross negligence in most jurisdictions. The standard violated is F2970 attendant training, supervision, and enforcement.

Stunt-tramp, basketball-dunk, and dodgeball injuries

Small dedicated trampolines angled toward basketball hoops or wall padding allow jumpers to launch into a shot, a flip, or a wall push-off. Higher velocity, smaller rebound surface, less attendant supervision. Injury patterns: ACL tear from rotational landing, shoulder dislocation from hoop or rim contact, traumatic brain injury from wall or hoop contact, cervical injury from botched flip into wall padding. Dodgeball played on trampoline surfaces concentrates collisions, eye injuries from ball strikes (retinal tears, orbital fractures), ACL and meniscus tears from unfocused landings, and concussions from head-ball impact. F2970 has feature-specific supervision requirements for these adjunct attractions. Failure to enforce them — including mixed-age and mixed-weight participation in dodgeball — is industry-known and industry-foreseeable.

Inter-patron violence — the Anthony Duran mechanism

On April 13, 2023, ten-year-old Anthony Duran was playing basketball at Rockin’ Jump Trampoline Park in Merced, California. He was involved in a “brief physical altercation” with another juvenile. He collapsed immediately afterward. A bystander performed CPR. Anthony Duran died on April 17, 2023, four days after the incident. Merced Police Department reviewed approximately 35 witnesses, secured surveillance video, and referred the matter to the Merced County District Attorney for charging consideration. The park rebranded after the incident. Rockin’ Jump operates today under the Sky Zone, Inc. corporate umbrella post-2023 consolidation, alongside Sky Zone and DEFY as sister brands under Palladium Equity Partners.

The legal framework: parks operating dodgeball, basketball-dunk lanes, and unsupervised attraction floors invite inter-patron confrontation. The duty of care is negligent-security analogous: foreseeable third-party violence at a venue that markets to mixed-age, mixed-sized minors and provides inadequate floor monitoring. ASTM F2970’s attendant-ratio provisions are about safety supervision, of which violence-prevention is a subset. Any case involving inter-patron violence at a Texas park should plead negligent security alongside premises liability and pursue the chain-wide pattern of inter-patron violence incidents in discovery.

Wall-padding failure — the Ric Swezey mechanism

In 2017, Ric Swezey — an adult and a world-class gymnast and stuntman — sustained a fatal cervical injury at a Virginia trampoline park when he stumbled and hit his head against a lightly padded wall. He cracked his C2 vertebra. He became paralyzed and 90-percent brain dead within three minutes. He died. The Swezey mechanism is the textbook wall-padding-failure pattern: F2970 perimeter-padding specifications exist precisely because the trampoline-park industry knows that even an elite athlete striking an inadequately padded wall at trampoline-bed velocity can suffer C-spine catastrophic injury. The duty anchor pairs with EN ISO 23659:2022 perimeter-padding specifications and Eager 2012 biomechanics establishing energy-transfer thresholds wall padding must absorb.

Vertebral artery dissection and spinal-cord stroke — the Elle Yona mechanism

Cervical hyperflexion or rotational shear during a flip, dive, or foam-pit landing can produce an intimal tear in the vertebral artery — the blood vessel running through the cervical-spine transverse foramina. The dissection produces ischemic infarction of the cervical cord. The condition presents subtly. It is frequently misdiagnosed as a panic attack in young patients because vertebral artery dissection in the young presents atypically without the classic stroke signs of older-adult presentations.

The viral case is Elle Yona, a teenager (age sixteen to seventeen) at a Miami trampoline park in June 2024. Mechanism: backflips into a foam pit. Sudden onset of back pain. Initial diagnosis: panic attack. Final diagnosis: C4 incomplete quadriplegia from spinal cord infarction caused by vertebral artery dissection. Her TikTok rehabilitation journey at @elle.yona has been viewed more than 27.4 million times with 1.1 million likes. The AJR / R3J 2024 imaging essay independently documents the radiographic signature of vertebral artery dissection in pediatric trampoline injuries — vertebral artery flow void on MRA, cord T2 hyperintensity at the level of infarction. The Elle Yona case is the contemporary public reminder that not every trampoline-park backflip ending in back pain is a muscle strain or a panic attack. When a young patient presents with sudden back pain after a foam-pit landing and the symptoms do not fit a panic attack, an MRI with T2-weighted and STIR sequences plus magnetic-resonance angiography is the appropriate workup. Delayed diagnosis equals larger infarct equals worse functional outcome equals additional damages.

Extended-jumping rhabdomyolysis

Continuous, unbroken jumping for extended periods — typically sixty to ninety-plus minutes, especially without hydration breaks — produces sustained eccentric muscle loading severe enough to rupture skeletal muscle cells and release myoglobin into the bloodstream. The resulting cascade: myoglobin filtered through the renal tubules in concentrations that overwhelm the kidneys’ capacity to clear it; renal tubular damage from myoglobin casts; metabolic acidosis with elevated anion gap; hyperkalemia capable of producing cardiac arrhythmia; potential progression to acute tubular necrosis and dialysis-dependent acute kidney injury; possible compartment syndrome in the extremities, requiring emergency fasciotomy.

The presentation timing is the diagnostic trap: rhabdomyolysis from extended trampoline use frequently presents twelve to forty-eight hours after the park visit, not at the park. The child is sent home from the park. The child wakes Sunday morning with cola-colored urine, severe muscle pain disproportionate to the prior day’s activity, and possible vomiting and confusion. Initial creatine kinase (CK) levels in severe cases can exceed 50,000 U/L (normal under 200). The condition is not in the NEISS database directly because the diagnosis is made at the ER or by the nephrologist after discharge — not at the park.

The Manginello Law Firm currently litigates a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston and Pi Kappa Phi involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure following extended physical exertion (Bermudez v. UH, filed November 21, 2025, Harris County District Court, 13-plus named defendants including UH, the UH Board of Regents, Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity Inc., Beta Nu Chapter, Pi Kappa Phi Housing Corporation, the Fraternity President, the Pledge Master, and 11 additional members). The mechanism — extended exertion plus inadequate hydration plus inadequate medical screening plus inadequate break protocols — is the same mechanism that produces the worst rhabdo outcomes at Texas trampoline parks. Same medical experts. Same renal-function curve. Same nephrology consultation pathway. Same discovery framework. Same institutional-defendant accountability theory. We are bringing the live UH litigation architecture to any Texas trampoline-park rhabdomyolysis case our firm screens.

Backyard mechanism cluster

The backyard residential mechanism cluster includes: fall-off from older equipment without enclosure netting, with the jumper landing on grass, concrete patio, stone edging, decking, or pool coping; ladder-access trespass, where the homeowner leaves the access ladder in place and a neighbor child wanders over (the textbook attractive-nuisance pattern); assembly defects from owner-installed direct-to-consumer trampolines; weather degradation including UV degradation of netting and fabric, freeze-thaw damage to springs and frame, hurricane displacement creating invisible frame damage, and corrosion of anchor points; placement on impermissible hard surfaces in violation of F381 and the manufacturer’s instructions for use; multi-jumper use by children of mismatched sizes; use by children under six; and use of non-OEM replacement parts (replacement springs, mats, or nets purchased online from non-certified sellers). Section 13 of this guide covers backyard cases specifically, including the CPSC recall history and the homeowner-insurance-exclusion reality.

Manufacturer-defect mechanism cluster

The product-liability cluster includes frame weld failures (Hedstrom 2003 recall, Jumpking 2005 recall, Super Jumper 2019 recall), spring failures, mat or bed failures (Sportspower BouncePro Walmart 2012 and 2013 recalls — the Tetlon-netting-breaks-children-fall-through pattern), net anchor failures (Skywalker 2009 recall — strap failure), warning-label inadequacy or label degradation, and latent design defect under risk-utility analysis (the seminal Anderson v. Hedstrom Corp., 76 F. Supp. 2d 422 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) safer-design-available foundation). Section 13 covers these in depth.

Foam-pit submerged-entrapment, second-impact syndrome, and other under-recognized mechanisms

The under-recognized mechanism cluster — the kind of injury most plaintiff firms miss — includes foam-pit submerged-entrapment asphyxia (a small child sinks deep, foam blocks close over, no employee sees), second-impact syndrome when a child concussed at the park returns to jumping within hours and sustains catastrophic cerebral edema (often fatal — and parks lag youth-sports leagues in concussion-recognition protocol adoption), atlanto-axial subluxation (disruption of the C1-C2 articulation, often without fracture, possible from rotational stress alone in pediatric cervical spines, can produce SCIWORA), the proximal tibial metaphyseal buckle fracture (the classic “trampoline fracture” in children ages 2-5), mid-thoracic vertebral compression fracture from mini-trampoline use (per the MDPI Medicina 2023 case series of seven patients), splenic laceration with delayed rupture, blunt cardiac contusion from chest-frame strike, and mid-thoracic compression fracture from sustained eccentric loading. Each is documented in the medical literature. None of them is a “freak accident.”

The infection vertical no other Texas firm covers

Trampoline parks and aging backyard trampolines produce biological injuries alongside mechanical ones. A child who acquires methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from a foam pit is as catastrophically injured as a child with a broken femur. Sometimes more so. These cases are real, the defendants are identifiable, the standard of care is breached, and the damages are substantial. Almost no Texas plaintiff firm handles this category. We do.

Why commercial trampoline parks are sanitation disasters

The structural problem: trampoline parks operate under no meaningful sanitation regulatory regime. Public swimming pools face health-department inspection, mandatory chlorination, and pH testing. Food service faces FDA, USDA, and state health-code regulation. Daycares face state-licensing sanitation rules. Commercial trampoline parks face no equivalent oversight. ASTM F2970 addresses safety. It says little about biological sanitation.

The throughput problem: major chain parks serve 500 to 2,000-plus jumpers per day during peak operating hours. Continuous operation precludes time-blocked cleaning windows during peak. Deep cleaning typically occurs overnight, once per twenty-four hours. Between-jumper sanitation is effectively absent.

The barefoot culture: most parks require shoe removal. Jumpers transit barefoot — or in grip socks that do not barrier-protect — from court to foam pit to dodgeball court to basketball trampoline to ninja course. Every foot-surface contact is a potential transmission vector.

The foam-pit problem is the central issue. Foam blocks absorb sweat, saliva, vomit (common among jumping children), urine (common among young children), blood from any laceration, and mucus. The interior of a foam block is impossible to disinfect by any cleaning method commercial parks use — surface spray cleans the outside only. Industry “foam rotation” usually means rotating blocks from top to bottom; bacteria inside the blocks persist. Foam block replacement cadence, where it occurs, is typically measured in years, not months. Bacteria — including MRSA — survive inside foam blocks for weeks to months. Norovirus survives on surfaces for two-plus weeks.

The infectious agents documented in trampoline park settings

Bacterial: MRSA (skin-to-skin and fomite transmission, foam-pit reservoir, cellulitis to abscess to necrotizing infection to bacteremia to sepsis to death in worst cases); methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (same mechanism, somewhat more treatable); Group A Streptococcus (strep throat, impetigo, cellulitis, with rare progression to necrotizing fasciitis or so-called “flesh-eating bacteria” — small wound to amputation or death within 24 to 72 hours); Pseudomonas aeruginosa (wet-environment bacterium relevant to foam pits, causing skin infections and otitis externa); Clostridium tetani (tetanus, particularly relevant to rusted backyard trampoline springs).

Viral: Norovirus (highly contagious gastroenteritis, 24-to-48-hour incubation, severe vomiting and diarrhea, 2-plus weeks survival on surfaces, only bleach reliably inactivates); Coxsackievirus producing hand-foot-mouth disease (highly contagious in children under ten); human papillomavirus producing plantar warts (transmitted via barefoot contact, 2-to-6-month incubation, persistent and often surgical removal); conjunctivitis (transmitted by hand-to-eye contact after touching contaminated surfaces); respiratory viruses (influenza, RSV, COVID-19, rhinovirus — crowded indoor environments with heavy breathing); molluscum contagiosum (months-to-years persistence, highly contagious).

Fungal: Tinea pedis (athlete’s foot), tinea corporis (ringworm), tinea unguium (nail fungus) — all transmitted via shared barefoot surfaces.

Parasitic: Scabies (mite infestation, rare in trampoline-park context but documented in sports-facility settings).

The seven liability theories for infection cases

Premises liability for unsanitary conditions. The park has a duty to maintain premises in a reasonably safe AND sanitary condition. A foam pit with known bacterial contamination is unsafe premises. Failure to maintain effective cleaning protocols is breach. The discovery target is cleaning standard operating procedures, cleaning logs, chemical receipts and Safety Data Sheets, and staff training records on sanitation.

Negligent failure to warn. The park knows or should know about bacterial and viral risk from CDC athletic-facility data, peer-reviewed athletic-facility infection literature, and trade-association guidance. No disclosure to parents at check-in, on the waiver, or on signage. Parents cannot make an informed decision about exposing their children. Damages include all costs of infection treatment and sequelae.

Negligent cleaning protocol. Industry cleaning best practices — to whatever extent they exist via IATP guidance, CDC athletic-facility recommendations, or facility-sanitation expert testimony — are not implemented. Reasonable cleaning cadence is not maintained. Ineffective cleaning chemicals (such as quaternary ammonium compounds that do not kill norovirus) are deployed.

Product liability against the foam-pit component manufacturer. Foam-pit component manufacturers market products without effective sanitation guidance. Foam composition that harbors bacteria and cannot be sanitized is a potentially defective design. Failure to provide reasonable cleaning instructions is failure-to-warn. Named defendants include foam-block suppliers and pit design and installation companies.

Fraudulent misrepresentation and Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act claims. Park marketing materials or signage that claim “sanitized,” “deep-cleaned daily,” or “safe for all ages” — when the actual cleaning protocols do not match the claims — trigger Texas DTPA exposure. The DTPA adds statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and mental-anguish damages not available under pure negligence. California UCL and CLRA, Massachusetts 93A, and New York General Business Law § 349 provide analogous theories in those states.

Breach of implied warranty. A play space implicitly carries an implied warranty of fitness for ordinary purpose — reasonably free from communicable disease. The warranty is violated when the park knows of infection risk and fails to address it.

Gross negligence — the waiver defeater. A park that knows the foam pit has been a vomit, blood, or urine-contamination site during the operating shift and re-opens the pit to jumpers without deep cleaning has acted with conscious disregard of a known risk. That is gross negligence under Moriel. The waiver does not reach it.

The Texas-specific infection litigation framework

Discovery for any Texas infection case demands: a spoliation letter preserving cleaning SOPs, cleaning logs (daily, between-session, and deep), cleaning chemical invoices and SDSs, staff training records on sanitation, incident reports for prior infection complaints, foam-pit maintenance and replacement records, and prior customer illness complaints. State health-department records on any complaints filed are pulled via Texas Public Information Act request under Texas Government Code Chapter 552. OSHA worker-illness records are pulled via FOIA. The chain corporate-level sanitation standards and the franchise-agreement sanitation provisions are pulled via Rule 34 document request. Witness canvass extends to other jumpers present on the date of exposure, staff members who cleaned or should have cleaned, and post-incident social-media posts. Medical workup includes culture and identification of the specific organism, molecular epidemiology where feasible to link infection to the park, and incubation-period analysis to establish the exposure window. Expert witnesses include an epidemiologist, an infectious-disease physician, an industrial hygienist, and a cleaning-protocol or facility-sanitation expert.

Damages in infection cases scale rapidly: acute hospitalization can run $50,000 to $500,000-plus; surgical intervention $25,000 to $200,000; post-discharge IV antibiotic therapy $15,000 to $50,000; long-term rehabilitation; psychological trauma (especially pediatric); permanent scarring or disfigurement; functional loss in necrotizing-fasciitis survivors; potential amputation. Necrotizing fasciitis carries a 20-to-30-percent mortality rate even with treatment.

Backyard biological hazards

Backyard residential trampolines add biological hazards that commercial parks do not present in the same way: mold on wet mat or padding (respiratory health hazards, allergic reactions); rust on springs (tetanus risk from cuts on rusted metal — particularly relevant for unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children); animal contamination from bird droppings or cat or dog feces on outdoor equipment (E. coli, salmonella, toxoplasmosis); mosquito breeding in water retention (West Nile virus, Eastern Equine Encephalitis); wasp, bee, or hornet nests under the frame or in leg tubing (anaphylaxis risk); snake exposure on Gulf Coast, Southeast, and Southwest properties (copperheads, rattlesnakes, water moccasins nest in tall grass around outdoor equipment); and tick exposure (Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, alpha-gal syndrome — region-dependent, with the Northeast and Upper Midwest dominated by Lyme and the Southeast by alpha-gal). The Texas Hill Country, East Texas, and Gulf Coast regions present specific tick and snake exposure considerations our firm screens for in any backyard case.

Catastrophic injuries — the medical specifics that drive damages

The single biggest difference between a generic personal-injury demand letter and one that moves a trampoline-park insurance carrier to pay is medical specificity. “Broken leg” is generic. “Comminuted femoral shaft fracture requiring open reduction and internal fixation with intramedullary nailing, with five-year orthopedic monitoring through skeletal maturity for limb-length discrepancy and angular deformity per Salter-Harris Type II classification” is the kind of demand-letter language that triggers actuarial reserve increases at the carrier level.

Pediatric traumatic brain injury

TBI is classified across a severity spectrum by Glasgow Coma Scale: mild TBI or concussion at GCS 13-15 with brief loss of consciousness or altered mental status and frequently CT-negative initial imaging; moderate TBI at GCS 9-12 with LOC of 30 minutes to 24 hours and structural findings on imaging; severe TBI at GCS 3-8 with LOC over 24 hours and significant structural injury. Trampoline-specific TBI mechanisms include head-first foam-pit landing (axial loading plus cervical hyperflexion), head-to-head collision in double-bounce, fall from trampoline onto concrete or decking with coup-contrecoup injury pattern, stunt-tramp wall or hoop impact, and flip-or-somersault landing on head producing diffuse axonal injury.

The named diagnoses our firm cites in demand letters and at trial include diffuse axonal injury (shearing of axonal fibers at gray-white matter junctions, often CT-negative initially with susceptibility-weighted MRI showing petechial hemorrhage), subdural hematoma (venous bleeding between dura and arachnoid, may require emergent craniotomy), epidural hematoma (arterial bleeding between skull and dura, classic lucid interval then rapid decline, surgical emergency), subarachnoid hemorrhage (severe headache, vasospasm risk), cerebral contusion (often frontal or temporal), depressed skull fracture (fragments driven inward, possible surgical elevation), and post-concussion syndrome with vestibular dysfunction.

The pediatric reality is harsher than the adult reality. A developing brain interferes with ongoing neural development. Damage may not fully manifest for six to twenty-four months post-injury. Academic regression is common but is often misattributed to “laziness” or “behavioral problems.” IQ losses are documented in cohort studies — pediatric severe TBI averages a ten- to twenty-plus-point IQ loss. Executive-function damage affects planning, attention, and impulse control for life. Emotional and behavioral sequelae include irritability, aggression, depression, and anxiety. The concussion-baseline gap is itself damages: most schools do baseline neuropsychological testing for youth athletes; trampoline parks do not. When a child is concussed at a park without baseline data, the post-injury comparison is compromised — and the compromise is itself a damages category.

Second-impact syndrome — catastrophic cerebral edema following a second concussive blow before the first concussion has resolved — is documented in youth athletics and is frequently fatal. Trampoline parks lag youth-sports leagues in adopting concussion-recognition protocols. A child concussed on the court who is told “you’re fine” by a teenage attendant and put back on the trampoline can sustain second-impact syndrome within minutes.

Spinal cord and cervical injuries

Spinal cord injury is classified by level (C1 through S5), by completeness (complete versus incomplete), and by ASIA Impairment Scale (Grade A complete to Grade E normal). The functional impact of cervical level matters: C1-C4 produces ventilator dependence and quadriplegia requiring full-time attendant care; C5 preserves biceps function but produces tetraplegia; C6 preserves wrist extension with limited hand function; C7 preserves triceps and substantial hand function with potential for independent self-care; C8-T1 preserves hand and finger function; T2-L5 produces paraplegia with wheelchair mobility but preserved upper-extremity function.

Trampoline-specific SCI mechanisms include head-first foam-pit entry (cervical axial-load injury), flip and somersault landing on head or neck (cervical hyperflexion or hyperextension), off-trampoline fall with head strike (compression injury), and double-bounce ejection with awkward landing.

SCIWORA — Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality — is a pediatric-specific phenomenon predominantly in children under ten. The pediatric cervical spine is highly flexible because of ligamentous laxity and cartilaginous vertebral endplates. Significant cord injury can occur without fracture or dislocation. Initial CT and even MRI may appear normal. Cord ischemia may develop hours after injury. Neurological decline can be progressive. The clinical implication: a child complaining of neck pain after a trampoline head-first entry who has a “normal” CT in the ER has not been cleared for cord injury. MRI with T2-weighted and STIR sequences is required. Many ERs miss this. The litigation implication is direct: park staff and EMS responders untrained in SCIWORA recognition frequently clear children to “walk it off,” move them inappropriately, or delay definitive imaging — and the delay extends cord ischemia into permanent deficit.

Damages for catastrophic cervical SCI are the largest single category in personal-injury law. For C1-C4 complete tetraplegia, lifetime attendant care runs $250,000 to $500,000 per year; wheelchair equipment replacement $25,000 to $50,000 every five years; home modifications $100,000 to $300,000 one-time plus periodic; vehicle modifications $50,000 to $150,000 every ten years; respiratory care for ventilator dependence $100,000 to $200,000 per year; ongoing medical complications including UTIs, pressure wounds, autonomic dysreflexia, and DVT prophylaxis. The total life-care plan for a pediatric C1-C4 complete cervical SCI typically anchors in the range of $15 million to $30 million-plus.

Pediatric fractures — the Salter-Harris architecture

Pediatric fractures are categorically different from adult fractures because pediatric bone is incompletely ossified, more pliable, and contains an open growth plate (the physis) that fails at lower loads than the adjacent metaphysis. Ligaments at pediatric ages are stronger than bone, which means force transmits through the bone instead of stopping at the joint. The result is fracture patterns specific to children, with lifetime consequences for growth, alignment, and function.

The femoral shaft fracture in a four- to ten-year-old is the injury trauma teams expect from trampoline accidents involving double-bounce, fall from elevation, or direct impact. Treatment involves closed reduction with spica cast for younger children or flexible intramedullary nailing for older children, with rigid IM nailing in the skeletally mature. Hospitalization runs three to ten days. Recovery requires three to six months of non-weightbearing or limited weightbearing. Complications include limb-length discrepancy (overgrowth of one to three centimeters is common in two- to ten-year-olds), angular malunion, and refracture risk. Long-term care includes annual orthopedic follow-up through skeletal maturity and potential corrective surgery.

The tibia-fibula fracture is documented in spiral, transverse, oblique, and comminuted patterns. Pediatric fractures often occur in the metaphyseal or physeal zones. The Gustilo-Anderson classification governs open (compound) fractures: Type I with a wound under one centimeter, Type II with a wound over one centimeter and limited soft-tissue damage, and Type III with extensive soft-tissue damage further subdivided into A, B, and C, with Type IIIC including vascular injury. Open fractures are orthopedic emergencies — antibiotics within one hour, surgical debridement within twenty-four hours.

The Salter-Harris classification of growth-plate fractures is the architecture every catastrophic-pediatric demand letter cites: Type I (through physis only, no metaphysis or epiphysis, usually good prognosis); Type II (through physis into metaphysis, most common, generally good prognosis); Type III (through physis into epiphysis, intra-articular, requires anatomic reduction); Type IV (through epiphysis, physis, and metaphysis, with growth disturbance common); and Type V (crush injury to physis, worst prognosis with growth-arrest likely). The reason Salter-Harris matters for damages: an injury at age eight can produce limb-length discrepancy or angular deformity that does not visibly manifest until age twelve to fourteen — years after the injury, when the growth plate should have been producing bone and didn’t. The long-term implications include annual orthopedic monitoring through skeletal maturity, potential epiphysiodesis (destruction of the opposite limb’s growth plate to equalize limb length), potential corrective osteotomy, prosthetic lift or orthotic adjustment, and lifetime gait and biomechanical implications.

The supracondylar humerus fracture is the most common operative pediatric elbow fracture, frequent in trampoline-adjacent fall-onto-outstretched-hand mechanisms. The Gartland classification (Type I through Type III) guides surgical approach. Type III displaced supracondylar fractures require closed reduction and percutaneous pinning in emergent surgical orthopedic care. Neurovascular risks include anterior interosseous nerve palsy, brachial artery injury, and Volkmann’s ischemic contracture if missed. Long-term complications include cubitus varus deformity if malunion and loss of range of motion.

Open and compound fractures from spring-strike injuries are medical emergencies. Bone is exposed through the skin. Osteomyelitis (bone infection) risk is elevated, particularly from spring-coil contamination. Tetanus risk is real for backyard rust. Treatment requires IV antibiotics, surgical debridement, and potential flap coverage.

Compartment syndrome develops within six hours when pressure within a muscle compartment exceeds perfusion pressure, producing ischemic injury to muscle and nerve. The classic five P’s are pain (out of proportion to injury), pallor, paresthesia, paralysis, and pulselessness (a late sign). Emergent fasciotomy is required to prevent ischemic myonecrosis. Long-term complications include permanent muscle loss, Volkmann’s contracture, and chronic pain.

The “trampoline fracture” specifically

The proximal tibial metaphyseal buckle fracture in children ages two to five — known in pediatric orthopedics as the “trampoline fracture” — is the classic pediatric trampoline injury. It is caused most commonly by a smaller child being launched off-axis when sharing a trampoline with a heavier jumper (the double-bounce energy-transfer mechanism). Healing is typically uneventful, but limb-length discrepancy and angular deformity must be monitored to skeletal maturity. The fracture is documented specifically in the AJR / R3J 2024 imaging essay.

Rhabdomyolysis with acute kidney injury — the UH bridge

Rhabdomyolysis pathophysiology in the trampoline context: muscle cell injury from extended exertion, direct crush, or compartment pressure leads to myoglobin release into circulation. Renal tubular damage results from myoglobin casts obstructing the tubules. Acute tubular necrosis produces acute kidney injury. Metabolic derangement includes hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia, hypocalcemia, and metabolic acidosis. Cardiac risk arises from hyperkalemic arrhythmia. In severe cases, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a complication.

Lab findings include creatine kinase often above 10,000 U/L (normal under 200), with severe cases above 50,000 and the worst above 100,000; myoglobinuria producing tea- or cola-colored urine (the classic diagnostic sign parents must recognize); elevated BUN and creatinine reflecting renal injury; hyperkalemia with T-wave peaking on EKG; metabolic acidosis with elevated anion gap.

Treatment is aggressive IV fluid resuscitation (often one to two liters per hour initially, with goal urine output 200 to 300 mL per hour); urine alkalinization in some centers; hemodialysis for severe AKI, hyperkalemia, or volume overload; ICU monitoring; treatment of the underlying cause including fasciotomy for compartment syndrome.

Long-term sequelae include residual chronic kidney disease in some survivors, persistent muscle weakness, exercise intolerance, and in pediatric cases potential dialysis dependence.

The Manginello Law Firm currently litigates a $10 million lawsuit against the University of Houston and Pi Kappa Phi involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. The pathophysiology in our active university case is identical to the pathophysiology in trampoline-park extended-jumping cases. The medical expert team, the discovery framework, the institutional-defendant accountability theory, the chain-of-causation analysis, and the damages architecture transfer directly. We are the only Texas firm with active live-litigation rhabdo experience applicable to Texas trampoline-park rhabdo cases.

Infection sequelae — the lifetime damages most firms miss

Infection-acquired-at-park damages compound over time. Cellulitis and soft-tissue infection (typically MRSA or MSSA) requires IV antibiotics, hospitalization, potential surgical drainage, two to six weeks of recovery, and potential scarring. Osteomyelitis (bone infection) is a frequent sequela of open-fracture contamination — IV antibiotics for four to six weeks minimum, surgical debridement, possible hardware removal or replacement, long-term risk of chronic osteomyelitis lasting months to lifetime, and potential amputation if uncontrolled. Necrotizing fasciitis from Group A Strep or polymicrobial infection progresses in hours, requires emergent wide surgical debridement, demands ICU care with hemodynamic support, often produces multiple surgeries and skin grafts, and carries 20-to-30-percent mortality even with treatment. Survivors face lifetime scarring, functional loss, and amputation risk. Septic arthritis requires emergency surgical washout, with potential permanent joint damage and long-term osteoarthritis risk. Sepsis and septic shock drive ICU care, organ failure risk, ICU-acquired weakness, and post-sepsis syndrome cognitive sequelae.

Specifically for splenic injury (Grade IV-V splenic laceration with active extravasation often requiring emergent splenectomy), the lifetime implication is overwhelming post-splenectomy infection (OPSI) — life-threatening risk from encapsulated organisms (pneumococcus, meningococcus, H. influenzae) for the rest of the patient’s life. Damages include lifetime vaccination cadence, antibiotic prophylaxis, emergency-plan medical alert, and a measurable reduction in life expectancy. Most plaintiff firms do not claim the full OPSI-related lifetime costs. We do.

Pediatric psychological and emotional injuries

Psychological injury in pediatric catastrophic-injury cases is not a soft claim. It is often the highest-damages category over the child’s lifetime. Post-traumatic stress disorder (DSM-5 criteria of exposure, intrusion, avoidance, negative cognition and mood alterations, arousal alterations, duration over one month, functional impairment) presents differently in children than adults: regression, repetitive play re-enactment, separation anxiety, school avoidance. Lifetime prevalence after pediatric catastrophic injury is documented at 25 to 45 percent. Treatment includes trauma-focused CBT, EMDR, and pharmacotherapy. Generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, specific phobia (including fear of recreational activity and trampolines specifically), and academic regression all produce damages. Parental PTSD and vicarious trauma add their own damages — parental hypervigilance, depression, relationship strain (with elevated divorce risk after pediatric catastrophic injury), and work impairment with loss-of-consortium claims where state law recognizes them. Sibling impact — anxiety disorders in siblings, academic regression, family-dynamics shifts — is often overlooked but compensable.

Wrongful death

The mechanisms producing trampoline-park fatalities documented in this guide include cervical spine injury with complete cord transection (C1-C3 level), traumatic brain injury with diffuse axonal injury or uncontrolled intracranial hypertension, foam-pit submerged-entrapment asphyxia, second-impact syndrome, hemorrhagic shock from major vascular injury, necrotizing infection with septic shock, and delayed rhabdo-induced cardiac arrhythmia.

The Texas wrongful-death statutory framework runs from Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 71.003 (wrongful-death action), § 71.004 (statutory beneficiaries — spouse, children, and parents; siblings have no standing), and § 71.021 (survival action). Texas wrongful-death damages include funeral and burial expenses, medical costs incurred prior to death, loss of financial support for dependents, loss of services, companionship, guidance, loss of consortium for spouses, loss of love-comfort-society for parents and children, the survival action for the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering, and mental anguish for statutory beneficiaries. Russell v. Ingersoll-Rand Co., 841 S.W.2d 343 (Tex. 1992), holds that wrongful-death plaintiffs must show the decedent could have maintained the underlying claim — releases against the decedent can bar the wrongful-death claim, except for the gross-negligence carve-out preserved under § 41.003. Minor wrongful-death beneficiaries’ SOL is tolled under § 16.001.

The documented U.S. trampoline-park fatality table is short — but each fatality is an industry-foreseeability data point: Ty Thomasson (age 30, SkyPark Indoor Trampoline Park, Phoenix, Arizona, February 2, 2012, foam-pit 2’8″ depth, broke five vertebrae); Ric Swezey (adult, Virginia trampoline park, 2017, C2 fracture into thinly padded wall); Matthew Lu (age 12, Altitude Gastonia, NC, 2019, climbing-wall harness failure, twenty-foot fall onto concrete); Anthony Duran (age 10, Rockin’ Jump Merced, California, April 13-17, 2023, basketball-court altercation); Emma Riddle (age 6, Urban Air Port St. Lucie, Florida, December 6, 2025, go-kart mechanical failure).

Damages range matrix — the framing for any Texas demand

These ranges are indicative, not promises. Every case is individually assessed. Actual outcomes depend on jurisdiction, liability, insurance availability, and individual circumstances.

Who pays — the five-layer defendant stack

The most expensive mistake any Texas family makes after a trampoline-park injury is naming only the local operator LLC as the defendant. The local operator is, by design, undercapitalized. The local operator’s primary general-liability policy is, by design, a fraction of the lifetime cost of a catastrophic injury. The money is not at the local operator. The money is upstream. The job of any plaintiff firm worth retaining is to walk every layer of the corporate stack and pursue every layer with insurance access.

The five-layer commercial-park defendant stack

Layer 1 — the operator LLC. The actual business running the specific park where the injury occurred. Typically a single-location entity: “Sky Zone Houston LLC” or “Sugar Land Urban Air, LLC” or “Pearland Urban Air, LLC.” This entity is on the lease, is the named insured on the GL policy, and is the direct employer of the attendants on duty. Often undercapitalized by design.

Layer 2 — the franchisee. Where the park is franchised, the franchisee is often a multi-unit holding company owning several locations. The franchise agreement defines operational control and may name the franchisor as an additional insured on the franchisee’s GL policy.

Layer 3 — the franchisor. The brand-licensor entity that grants franchise rights and imposes operational standards through training requirements, brand-standards manuals, and supervision protocols. The principal franchisor entities our firm names in Texas trampoline-park cases include Sky Zone Franchising LLC (Sky Zone), UATP Management LLC and UATP Holdings LLC and UA Attractions LLC and Urban Air Franchise Holdings (Urban Air), Altitude Franchise Holdings (Altitude), and Launch Franchise Holdings (Launch). The franchisor is liable when it retained control over the aspect of operation that caused the injury — and franchisors typically mandate attendant training curricula, inspection cadence, and safety protocols, which means they retain the control that produces injuries when violated.

Layer 4 — the corporate parent. The brand parent of the franchisor. Effective January 1, 2023, Sky Zone, Inc. — formerly known as CircusTrix LLC — is the parent of Sky Zone, DEFY, and Rockin’ Jump as sister brands. Unleashed Brands LLC is the parent of Urban Air. ATP Alpha is the parent of Altitude (named alongside Altitude Gastonia and Ropes Courses, Inc. in the Matthew Lu wrongful-death suit). The corporate parent is reachable through alter-ego or piercing-the-corporate-veil theories where Texas law supports them, and reachable on direct-negligence theories when the parent itself made the chain-wide safety, staffing, or capital-allocation decisions that contributed to the injury.

Layer 5 — the private equity sponsor. The PE firm that owns the corporate parent. Palladium Equity Partners has been the ultimate owner of the Sky Zone-DEFY-Rockin’ Jump corporate parent continuously since 2018, when Palladium-backed CircusTrix acquired Sky Zone. Palladium’s $450 million continuation fund for Fund IV portfolio companies signals continued control and rebuts any “hands-off PE” defense. Seidler Equity Partners acquired Unleashed Brands on February 7, 2023, from prior owners including MPK Partners. The PE sponsor is reachable when investment-committee documents demonstrate approval of the cost-cutting decisions that produced the injury — attendant ratio reductions, deferred capital spending on equipment replacement, deferred foam-pit replacement, deferred maintenance capex. The PE 30(b)(6) deposition is one of the most under-deployed plaintiff tools in this industry.

Texas-deep additional defendant categories

Beyond the five-layer stack, our firm names additional defendant categories proven by recent verdicts and arbitration awards:

Climbing-wall and ropes-course manufacturers. Ropes Courses, Inc. was a co-defendant in the Matthew Lu wrongful-death suit. The auto-belay manufacturer (Perfect Descent or Head Rush TRUBLUE), the harness and lanyard manufacturer, the installer, and the certifier are all reachable in any catastrophic climbing-wall case.

Go-kart manufacturer and pedal-throttle ECU supplier. Establishing the Emma Riddle Urban Air Port St. Lucie precedent — the kart manufacturer, the supplier of the electronic control unit, and the assembler-installer all face product-liability claims when erratic pedal-throttle response or restraint-system failure is implicated.

HVAC and facility-contractor co-defendants. Where ambient temperature contributed to heat illness or rhabdomyolysis, the HVAC service contractor, the facility maintenance vendor, and (where HVAC is landlord-side) the landlord are co-defendants. Pull HVAC service records and indoor-air-quality testing.

Insurance application underwriter or agent. Where the park’s CGL or umbrella application misrepresented safety practices — attendant ratios, training programs, inspection protocols, or incident history — the insurance broker or underwriter who placed the coverage may be a co-defendant or a third-party defendant. The coverage-rescission risk and bad-faith leverage that follow are detailed in Section 14.

Rebrand-period predecessor entity. DEFY rebranded from Sky High Sports / Flip N Out around 2019. Rockin’ Jump Merced rebranded post-incident after Anthony Duran’s fatality. Formula Fun Abilene rebranded from Maxx Air in 2024. Sky Zone, Inc. is formerly known as CircusTrix LLC. In any rebrand, the predecessor entity is the proper defendant for pre-rebrand facts; the successor is the proper defendant for post-rebrand facts; corporate-continuation, mere-continuation, and fraudulent-conveyance doctrines apply if the successor disclaims predecessor liability.

Class B inflatable component manufacturers — Texas-specific. The bungee-trampoline cord and harness manufacturer; the Sky Rider zipline-coaster manufacturer (UA Attractions LLC for Urban Air-branded Sky Riders); the inflatable obstacle-course manufacturer (commonly Ninja Jump, Bounceland, Magic Jump, or Cutting Edge Creations); the inflatable slide manufacturer. Each is a separate product-liability defendant under the Class B inflatable carve-in at Texas Occupations Code § 2151.002.

Property landlord. The landlord of the building where the park operates — common in shopping-center, outlet-mall, and industrial-park conversions. Direct negligence as to common-area or exterior injuries (parking lot, entrance), premises-liability overlap in lease-controlled spaces, and lease-level notice clauses requiring incident notification all create access points. Many leases include incident-notice provisions and specified insurance coverage with the landlord as an additional insured.

Individual attendant and shift supervisor. The attendant assigned to the court, foam pit, or feature where the injury occurred. The shift supervisor on duty. We name them for strategic reasons — establishing individual fault triggers gross-negligence analysis, creates a deposition target with direct knowledge, and forces the employer to address scope-of-employment arguments. Recovery comes from upstream layers; naming the individual attendant is leverage, not a collection target.

Birthday-party coordinator or third-party event vendor. Some parks outsource birthday-party coordination. Negligent event management and failure to enforce safety protocols are claimable.

Food-service operator. If the park’s cafe or snack bar is concessioned to a third-party operator, food poisoning or scalding-burn incidents at the concession trigger separate negligence and Texas DTPA claims that stack on top of the trampoline waiver.

The eleven-defendant backyard residential stack

For backyard cases, the defendants change but the principle of multi-defendant pleading does not. We name: the homeowner (premises liability plus attractive-nuisance for trespasser children); the homeowner’s insurance carrier (for coverage analysis and possible bad-faith claim if coverage is denied); the trampoline manufacturer (Jumpking, Skywalker, Springfree, JumpSport, Bouncepro/Sportspower-Walmart-private-label, ACON, Vuly, Zupapa, Upper Bounce, Plum Play, Amazon Basics, HEDSTROM, Bollinger — product liability for design defect, manufacturing defect, failure to warn, post-sale duty, and failure to effectively recall); the retailer (Walmart, Amazon, Target, Costco — product liability under Bolger v. Amazon and Oberdorf v. Amazon for marketplace-platform-as-seller doctrine); the importer (where the manufacturer is foreign-made and unreachable, the U.S. importer is the path forward); the marketplace operator (Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair); the installer or assembler if professional installation occurred; the HOA or landlord or property owner if the trampoline sits on HOA common area or rented property; the after-market component seller (replacement nets, mats, springs purchased online); and any supervising adult other than the homeowner (babysitter, family friend, coach).

Secondary-venue defendants

School-trampoline injury cases routinely involve the school district (subject to the Texas Tort Claims Act with damages caps and short administrative-claim periods for public schools, full tort liability without sovereign immunity for private schools), the charter-bus company, the chaperone arrangement, and the school’s own GL coverage. AAP guidance is explicit that trampolines should not be used in routine PE classes — a school using a trampoline at all is operating against documented pediatric medical consensus. Summer-camp injury cases involve the camp operator (American Camp Association accreditation standards apply), the camp’s GL coverage, and any state-licensing-rule violations. Daycare cases are particularly strong because most state child-care licensing rules prohibit trampoline use at licensed daycare facilities — a Texas daycare with a trampoline is operating in violation of state child-care regulation, supporting a negligence-per-se argument. HOA common-area trampoline injuries reach the HOA’s master GL policy and, in egregious cases, the individual board members through D&O coverage. Religious organizations, YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, and youth ministries are all reachable on standard premises-liability theories.

The professional and ancillary defendant set

Beyond operators, manufacturers, and venues, additional defendants emerge in specific fact patterns: the park’s insurance broker (where complicit in misrepresentation); the waiver-drafting law firm (extremely rare, reserved for cases where the drafter knew the waiver was unenforceable and continued to publish); the third-party safety consultant retained by the park (if hired to audit ASTM compliance and missed violations); the certification body (if the park holds third-party safety certification); the foam-block, mat, or padding supplier (in infection cases under Section E.16); the staffing agency where the park uses temporary staffing (dual-employer doctrine in many states); and the trampoline-park insurance underwriter as discussed above.

The principle is uniform: in a serious case, name them all. The franchisee LLC’s insurance is limited; the franchisor’s is deeper; the equipment manufacturer’s product-liability coverage triggers separately. Plead them all. Discovery sorts out who actually pays.

Texas trampoline park law — the doctrines, statutes, and cases

Texas has no statewide trampoline-park safety statute. Texas does have a deeply developed body of premises-liability, product-liability, gross-negligence, and minor-protection doctrine that governs every Texas trampoline-park case. The doctrines below are the spine of any Texas plaintiff’s pleading.

The Dresser fair-notice doctrine

Dresser Industries, Inc. v. Page Petroleum, Inc., 853 S.W.2d 505 (Tex. 1993). Texas’s seminal waiver-enforceability case. A Texas waiver that purports to release the operator from its own future negligence must satisfy two requirements as questions of law for the court on summary judgment. First, the express-negligence requirement — the release must specifically state that it covers the releasing party’s own negligence, using the word “negligence” or its clear equivalent. Generic “release of all claims” or “any and all liability” language is insufficient. Second, the conspicuousness requirement — the language must attract the attention of a reasonable person looking at the document. Texas applies the UCC § 1.201(b)(10) definition: text in larger or contrasting color, ALL CAPS, bold, underlined, or otherwise distinguishable.

The Dresser attack in any Texas trampoline-park case proceeds in two parts. First, demand the actual waiver version executed at the kiosk — frequently, kiosk waivers use generic “release any and all claims” language that fails the express-negligence test, and frequently the release clause is buried in a multi-screen click-through where conspicuousness is in question. Second, pull the Wayback Machine archive of the operator’s waiver across the 24 to 36 months preceding the incident — kiosk versions change, and a version that lacked express-negligence language at the time of incident cannot be retrofitted by the operator’s later updates.

Ancillary case: Storage & Processors, Inc. v. Reyes, 134 S.W.3d 190 (Tex. 2004) applied the conspicuousness doctrine to sophisticated commercial parties under the UCC standard.

Munoz v. II Jaz — the parental-indemnity void

Munoz v. II Jaz, Inc., 863 S.W.2d 207 (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 1993, no writ). A Texas parent cannot waive a minor child’s personal-injury cause of action in advance. The court relied on Texas Family Code § 12.04 (now § 151.001) and on public-policy concerns about leaving a child “in an unacceptably precarious position” if a pre-injury waiver could deprive the child of the financial means to address an injury. Munoz is the seminal Texas authority for the proposition that a parent’s signature on an Urban Air, Sky Zone, Altitude, Launch, or Cosmic Air kiosk waiver does not bar the minor’s own tort claim against the park.

Important nuance: Munoz does not bar a parent from signing an arbitration clause on the child’s behalf where federal arbitration law preempts the issue. In re Rivera and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), establish FAA-preemption framework for arbitration clauses specifically — and the Texas Supreme Court applied that framework in Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air (2025), discussed in the next section.

Companion authority: Paz v. Life Time Fitness, Inc., 757 F. Supp. 2d 658 (S.D. Tex. 2010). A Texas waiver may bar a parent’s own derivative claims (for medical expenses paid, loss of services) even where it does not bar the child’s underlying claim. The pleading nuance matters: in any Texas pediatric trampoline case, plead the minor’s personal cause of action through next-friend or guardian-ad-litem procedure, and acknowledge the potential bar on parental-derivative claims while preserving every claim available under the gross-negligence carve-out.

The Texas gross-negligence framework — Moriel and § 41

Transportation Insurance Co. v. Moriel, 879 S.W.2d 10 (Tex. 1994). The Texas Supreme Court’s crystallization of the gross-negligence test. Texas gross negligence requires two elements: (1) an act or omission that, when viewed objectively from the actor’s standpoint, involves an extreme degree of risk considering the probability and magnitude of the potential harm; AND (2) the actor’s actual subjective awareness of the risk involved, but proceeding with conscious indifference to the rights, safety, or welfare of others. Moriel also established the bifurcation procedure under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.009 (financial-condition evidence reserved for Phase 2) and the written-explanation requirement on factual-sufficiency review.

The statutory framework: Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.001(11) codifies the gross-negligence definition. § 41.003(a)(3) requires gross-negligence findings by clear and convincing evidence. § 41.003(d) requires unanimous jury findings on liability, on gross-negligence/malice/fraud, and on amount. § 41.008 caps exemplary damages at the greater of (a) two times economic damages plus non-economic damages up to $750,000, or (b) $200,000. § 41.008(c) provides a felony-grade unlock that is rare in recreational-injury cases.

The Cosmic Jump $11.485 million Harris County verdict is the contemporary Moriel-grade Texas anchor: actual prior knowledge of the torn slide, failure to remediate, an extreme degree of risk objectively viewed, and conscious indifference. The waiver was signed. The jury found gross negligence anyway. The waiver did not save the park.

The Texas authorities are split on whether a release CAN bar gross negligence at all. The weight of recent appellate authority favors plaintiffs: Van Voris v. Team Chop Shop, LLC, 402 S.W.3d 915 (Tex. App. — Dallas 2013) (release does not bar gross negligence); Sydlik v. REEIII, Inc., 195 S.W.3d 329 (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 2006) (release does not bar gross negligence); contrasting with Newman v. Tropical Visions, Inc., 891 S.W.2d 713 (Tex. App. — San Antonio 1994, writ denied) (release CAN bar gross negligence). The Texas Supreme Court has not resolved the split. We plead gross negligence in every catastrophic Texas trampoline-park case our firm screens — the weight of authority and the public-policy logic of § 41.003 favor plaintiffs.

Wrongful-death and survival statutes

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003(a) — two-year statute of limitations for personal injury, running from accrual.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.001(a)(1) and (b) — minor tolling. The clock does not begin until the minor’s eighteenth birthday. The minor has until age twenty to file. The parent’s derivative claims are NOT tolled and must be filed within two years of the injury date — a critical pleading nuance that traps families who assume the minor’s tolling extends to the parent.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code §§ 71.003-021 — the wrongful-death and survival statutory framework. § 71.003 establishes the wrongful-death action. § 71.004 lists statutory beneficiaries (spouse, children, parents — siblings have no standing). § 71.021 establishes the survival action. Minor wrongful-death beneficiaries’ SOL is tolled under § 16.001.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.067 — the borrowing statute. An out-of-state cause of action brought in Texas takes the shorter of the Texas SOL or the originating state’s SOL.

Russell v. Ingersoll-Rand Co., 841 S.W.2d 343 (Tex. 1992) — wrongful-death plaintiffs must show that the decedent could have maintained the underlying claim. Releases against the decedent can bar wrongful-death — except for the gross-negligence carve-out preserved under § 41.003.

Computer Associates International v. Altai, 918 S.W.2d 453 (Tex. 1996) — the discovery rule applies narrowly in Texas, only when the injury is “inherently undiscoverable and objectively verifiable.” Trampoline injuries rarely qualify. Latent head injuries that develop CTE-style symptoms over time may qualify in unusual cases — plead it where supported.

Comparative fault, premises liability, and assumption of risk

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.001 and § 33.013 — Modified 51% bar on comparative fault. A plaintiff whose own fault is found to be more than 50 percent recovers nothing. At 50 percent or less, recovery is reduced proportionally. Joint-and-several liability applies to defendants found more than 50 percent at fault under § 33.013.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.004 — responsible-third-party (RTP) designation. Texas defendants routinely designate RTPs at least sixty days before trial: the injured participant, the parent or guardian, horseplay co-jumpers, the equipment manufacturer, the landlord, prior-injury physicians. The plaintiff’s counter is the § 33.004(l) no-evidence motion, supported by a biomechanics-expert affidavit, to knock each RTP designation back. The defense plays this as a percentage game; we play it as an evidentiary one.

The Texas pediatric comparative-fault doctrine: under approximately age seven, a child is conclusively presumed incapable of negligence. Children ages seven to fourteen are rebuttably presumed incapable. Children over fourteen face the standard reasonable-child-of-similar-age-and-experience standard. We deploy this doctrinally in every pediatric Texas trampoline-park case.

Corbin v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 648 S.W.2d 292 (Tex. 1983) — the Texas invitee four-element test: (1) actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition; (2) the condition posed an unreasonable risk; (3) failure to exercise reasonable care to reduce or eliminate the risk; (4) proximate causation. The standard premises-liability doctrine for any Texas trampoline-park case.

Farley v. M.M. Cattle Co., 529 S.W.2d 751 (Tex. 1975) — Texas abolished assumption of risk as a separate defense and folded it into proportionate-fault analysis under § 33. Texas defendants cannot plead “the plaintiff assumed the risk of trampolining” as a complete bar. They can only argue fault allocation.

Torrington Co. v. Stutzman, 46 S.W.3d 829 (Tex. 2000) — negligent undertaking doctrine. A park that voluntarily undertakes to monitor jumpers, enforce rules, or instruct patrons owes a duty to do so reasonably.

The Texas amusement-ride statutory carve-in

Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 — the Texas Amusement Ride Safety Inspection and Insurance Act, administered by the Texas Department of Insurance under 28 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 5, Subchapter J.

§ 2151.002(1)(C)(iv) excludes “trampoline” from amusement-ride coverage. Texas trampoline decks themselves are statutorily outside the regulatory regime. This is the regulatory-vacuum argument central to every Texas pleading — Texas operators face no state-mandated annual inspection, no posted compliance sticker, no required injury reporting.

The Class B inflatable carve-in — the under-deployed Texas pleading hook. § 2151.002 plus TDI regulation INCLUDES Class B amusement rides within trampoline parks: bungee trampolines, inflatable obstacle courses, Sky Rider zip-coasters, indoor coasters, inflatable slides, and bounce houses. Class B inflatables require annual inspection, $1 million combined-single-limit insurance coverage, and a posted compliance sticker under §§ 2151.1015(b), 2151.103, and 2151.104. TDI may close an unsafe ride under § 2151.151. Texas Government Code Chapter 552 — the Texas Public Information Act — allows our firm to pull TDI inspection records, sticker history, and any closure orders as public records. Any Texas case involving a Sky Rider, a bungee trampoline, an inflatable obstacle, or an indoor coaster should plead a separate cause of action under Chapter 2151 and pull the TDI inspection record.

The Texas signer-authority defeat — Family Code § 153.073

Texas Family Code § 153.073 — only a parent or court-appointed conservator has signing authority for a minor child. A grandmother, an aunt, an older sibling, a parent’s partner without conservatorship, a friend’s parent, or a non-custodial parent cannot bind the child to a waiver. Especially powerful at quinceañeras and birthday-party buyouts at Urban Air, Altitude, and The Rush; at school field trips with non-custodial-parent chaperones; and at multi-generational extended-family weekend events common in Hispanic-market metros — Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, and Corpus Christi.

The intake-protocol implication is concrete. Capture WHO signed the waiver, the relationship to the child, and pull SAPCR (Suit Affecting the Parent-Child Relationship) decrees, divorce decrees, and conservator appointments to confirm signing authority. Each non-guardian signature is an independent attack vector that stacks with the Munoz parental-indemnity void.

The Delfingen bilingual-formation doctrine

Delfingen US-Texas, L.P. v. Valenzuela, 407 S.W.3d 791 (Tex. App. — El Paso 2013, no pet.) — a Texas court was justified in denying enforcement of an arbitration agreement where the employer did not provide a Spanish translation and the employee lacked English literacy. The doctrine arose in the employment-arbitration context but applies by direct analogy to commercial trampoline-park kiosk waivers.

The Texas general rule: EZ Pawn Corp. v. Mancias, 934 S.W.2d 87 (Tex. 1996); In re McKinney, 167 S.W.3d 833 (Tex. 2005). Inability to read a contract is not a defense absent fraud or misrepresentation. Delfingen plus the trampoline-park kiosk fact pattern provide the on-ramp. The fact pattern: the park presented an English-only iPad waiver as a “sign-in sheet”; the patron’s primary language was Spanish; the park did not offer a Spanish translation, did not ask, and pressured signature (“sign quickly or you lose your time”). Procedural unconscionability arises from the language barrier plus the take-it-or-leave-it pressure plus the absence of opportunity to review plus the form-buried-in-tablet structure. Possible fraudulent inducement arises if the attendant said anything misleading about scope or effect.

Texas demographics: Texas is approximately 40 percent Hispanic per the 2020 U.S. Census and ACS 2024 data. In Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, McAllen, Brownsville, Laredo, and Corpus Christi metros, Spanish is the dominant household language for a substantial fraction of trampoline-park patrons. Franchisor waivers are almost universally English-only, presented on iPads at the front counter by minimum-wage teenage attendants. Multi-generational family gatherings and quinceañera and birthday-party buyouts at Urban Air, Altitude, and The Rush — and non-custodial-relative signatures — are routine. Three independent attack vectors converge: Delfingen bilingual formation, § 153.073 signer authority, and Moriel gross negligence.

Apparent agency and franchisor liability — the Sampson framework

Baptist Memorial Hospital System v. Sampson, 969 S.W.2d 945 (Tex. 1998) — Texas’s apparent-agency three-element test. (1) The principal’s conduct (branding, signage, uniforms, central booking, central marketing). (2) The plaintiff reasonably believed the agent was the principal’s. (3) The plaintiff justifiably relied on that belief.

The franchisor-piercing theory in Texas trampoline-park cases. Apparent-agency evidence at any chain park includes branded signage, branded staff uniforms, branded waivers and wristbands and safety rules, brand-website “our parks/our staff” content, brand-controlled booking and payment and gift cards, a central call center, and central marketing. The franchisor is reachable on apparent-agency theory in any case where the plaintiff reasonably believed they were doing business with the franchisor (Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude, Launch) rather than with the local franchisee LLC.

The standard seven-count Texas trampoline-park complaint structure: (I) premises liability; (II) negligent undertaking; (III) negligent hiring, training, retention, and supervision; (IV) gross negligence under Chapter 41; (V) products liability; (VI) apparent and ostensible agency; (VII) breach of non-delegable duty under Chapter 2151 for Class B inflatables.

Damages caps and punitive mechanics

Texas does NOT cap general-tort non-economic damages. The medical-malpractice cap is the principal cap in Texas tort law and does not apply to trampoline-park cases. Trampoline-park non-economic damages in Texas are uncapped.

Punitive damages are capped under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.008 at the greater of (a) two times economic damages plus non-economic damages up to $750,000, or (b) $200,000. The § 41.008(c) felony unlock applies in rare cases where a felony grade of conduct is established. Worked example: on a $5 million compensatory verdict (with $2 million economic and $3 million non-economic), the punitive cap calculates to 2 × $2 million + $750,000 = $4.75 million.

§ 41.003(d) requires a unanimous jury for punitive findings. § 41.009 permits the defendant to bifurcate the punitive proceeding, with financial-condition evidence reserved for Phase 2.

The Texas DTPA

The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act stacks on top of product liability and premises liability when manufacturer or operator safety claims turn out to be misleading. The DTPA adds statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and mental-anguish damages not available under pure negligence. Commercial trampoline-park marketing claims (e.g., “safest family fun in Texas,” “deep-cleaned daily,” “ASTM-certified”) that prove to be inaccurate trigger DTPA exposure. The DTPA is particularly powerful in cases involving infection (Section E.16) and food-service injuries adjacent to trampoline activity.

The 2025 jurisdictional split — Cerna, Geter, Santiago, Coppi, Karlin

2025 was the most consequential year in trampoline-park waiver-enforceability law in a decade. Multiple state supreme courts and intermediate appellate courts decided cases that defined the contemporary doctrine in opposite directions. A Texas family’s case is governed by Texas’s pro-defendant arbitration rulings. A Pennsylvania family’s case is governed by Pennsylvania’s pro-plaintiff Supreme Court ruling. The same fact pattern produces different forum and different outcome depending on the state.

Texas — Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air, May 23, 2025

Cerna, as Next Friend of R.W., v. Pearland Urban Air, LLC, No. 24-0273 (Tex. May 23, 2025). Abigail Cerna signed a release agreement at Urban Air Pearland on August 30, 2020, containing a broadly worded arbitration clause covering disputes related to the scope, validity, and arbitrability of the agreement — a delegation clause. On November 21, 2020, Cerna returned to the park with her child without signing another release. The child was injured. The trial court denied Urban Air’s motion to compel arbitration, reasoning that the August agreement did not apply to the November visit. The Fourteenth Court of Appeals reversed. The Texas Supreme Court affirmed and remanded for an order compelling arbitration.

The holding: while courts must decide challenges contesting the existence of arbitration agreements, a challenge that disputes an agreement’s existence as to a particular claim is a challenge to the SCOPE of the agreement, not its existence. Since Cerna did not dispute that the August agreement existed — only that it didn’t apply to November — that was a scope question, and scope was delegated to the arbitrator under the agreement’s delegation clause.

The countermove for Texas plaintiff firms post-Cerna: challenge the delegation clause itself specifically, separately and surgically, as unconscionable, unconspicuous, overbroad, or uninformed. Cite Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. 63 (2010), establishing that a delegation clause is severable and must be specifically attacked. Pair with the litigation-conduct waiver doctrine (Coppi, discussed below) when the defense participates substantially in litigation before moving to compel.

The case is not over for the Cerna minor child. The forum changed; the merits did not disappear. Arbitration can still produce major awards — the Damion Collins $15.6 million Kansas arbitration award demonstrates that. But the strategy in Texas Urban Air cases shifted post-May 2025: name non-signatory defendants on whom no estoppel argument runs, attack the delegation clause specifically, develop the gross-negligence record in arbitration, and pursue Munoz parental-indemnity void as the substantive carve-out that survives any arbitration order.

Texas — Beaumont Adventure Park v. Geter, September 12, 2024

Beaumont Adventure Park Urban Air, LLC v. Geter (as Next Friend of K.G., a Minor), No. 14-23-00850-CV (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] September 12, 2024). March 19, 2021. K.G., a minor, was bouncing on a trampoline in the dodgeball section at Urban Air Beaumont when she was knocked over by another child and landed on a hard surface. Mother Chiniqua Geter sued on K.G.’s behalf in Fort Bend County 268th District Court. Defendants included Beaumont Adventure Park Urban Air, LLC (franchisee), UATP Management LLC (franchisor), UATP IP LLC, UA Attractions LLC, and individual owners Rachelle Nurse-Goodly and Joseph Goodly.

The Fourteenth Court of Appeals reversed in part — compelling arbitration as to Urban Air on direct-benefits-estoppel grounds — and affirmed in part — keeping claims against the non-signatory defendants in court. The doctrinal punch is that K.G., who did not sign the arbitration agreement, could be compelled to arbitrate claims based on the theory that she received the direct benefit (park access, attraction use) of the agreement her parent signed.

The countermove: Geter is narrow on its facts. A minor’s bracelet plus one bounce session is contestable as a “direct benefit” in the contractual-formation sense. The minor was a guest at a venue, not a counterparty to a commercial agreement she did not sign and could not have signed. Geter‘s critical concession remains the rule we plead around: claims against non-signatory defendants stay in court. Naming UATP Management LLC, UA Attractions LLC, the manufacturer of any equipment involved, and the individual owners preserves jury-trial venue against the deeper-pocket defendants while only the signing-park entity is compelled to arbitration.

Texas — Bite Entertainment v. Trevino, 2024

Bite Entertainment, LLC d/b/a Urban Air South San Antonio v. Trevino (as Next Friend of J.T., a Minor), No. 04-23-00146-CV (Tex. App. — San Antonio [4th Dist.] 2024). Same Texas Urban Air arbitration cluster. Verify the current procedural posture before citing in any pleading. Trevino is a companion data point demonstrating that the Texas appellate Urban Air arbitration line is consistent across districts.

Pennsylvania — Santiago v. Philly Trampoline Park / Shultz v. Sky Zone, 2025

Santiago v. Philly Trampoline Park, LLC and Shultz v. Sky Zone, LLC, Nos. 24-EAP-2023 and 25-EAP-2023 (Pa. 2025) — consolidated landmark. Several minors were injured at Sky Zone parks in Philadelphia. In each case, only one parent signed a “Participation Agreement, Release and Assumption of the Risk” containing an arbitration provision. Non-signing parents and the minor children themselves were brought into the litigation. Sky Zone and Philly Trampoline Park moved to compel arbitration.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued two holdings in 2025. First, a parent lacks the authority to bind a minor child to an arbitration agreement. Doing so deprives the minor of judicial protections and oversight designed to safeguard the child’s interests. Second, a parent who signs an arbitration agreement cannot bind a non-signing spouse merely by virtue of marriage — absent an evidentiary showing of agency between spouses, spousal authority does not automatically extend.

The cases proceed in court rather than in arbitration. The signing-adult underlying waiver remains evaluable on its own terms; the arbitration clause within the waiver is what is unenforceable as to minors and as to non-signing spouses. Santiago and Shultz are now binding statewide Pennsylvania law and represent the most plaintiff-favorable contemporary appellate ruling in trampoline-park litigation. They directly mirror — and oppose in outcome — the Texas Supreme Court’s Cerna ruling decided in the same calendar year.

New Jersey — Coppi v. Family Adventures North Jersey, 2025

Coppi v. Family Adventures North Jersey, LLC d/b/a Urban Air Trampoline and Adventure Park, A-3083-23 (N.J. App. Div. 2025). Julien Coppi was injured when he struck his head while jumping at Urban Air South Hackensack, NJ. He had signed the waiver on behalf of himself and his son. Family Adventures North Jersey and UATP Management moved to compel arbitration. The trial court compelled arbitration in May 2024. The Appellate Division reversed.

The holding: although the arbitration clause was voluntarily signed and unambiguous, Urban Air had participated in EXTENSIVE DISCOVERY with the plaintiff before moving to compel arbitration, and the park’s litigation conduct WAIVED its right to compel arbitration. Coppi is the contemporary New Jersey embodiment of the ancient rule that a party cannot litigate and simultaneously preserve its right to arbitrate. Morgan v. Sundance, Inc., 596 U.S. 411 (2022) — the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal “prejudice” requirement for arbitration waiver — strengthens this attack across the country.

The plaintiff-side leverage: pressure trampoline-park defendants into full-scope discovery as early as possible. Track every defense filing, every interrogatory exchange, every deposition notice, every scheduling-order participation. Each is evidence of substantial participation that, after a sufficient delay, supports a litigation-conduct-waiver argument that the right to arbitration has been forfeited.

Missouri — Karlin v. UATP Springfield, 2025

Karlin v. UATP Springfield (Mo. Sup. Ct. 2025). A pro-defendant ruling. The Missouri Supreme Court enforced the Urban Air delegation clause despite arguments about invalid signatories. Karlin is the Missouri analog to Texas’s Cerna — the same delegation-clause doctrine applied with the same pro-defendant outcome. Plaintiff-side response is the same: challenge the delegation clause specifically as separately unconscionable; rely on the gross-negligence carve-out in arbitration; pursue litigation-conduct waiver if the defense delays.

The plaintiff-friendly state cluster — the historical foundation

The contemporary doctrine builds on a foundation of state-supreme-court rulings going back to the early 1990s.

Hojnowski ex rel. Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park, 187 N.J. 323 (N.J. 2006) — a parent may bind a minor to arbitration but may NOT bind a minor to a pre-injury substantive tort-claim release at a commercial recreational facility. The seminal New Jersey ruling that animates much of the post-2006 minor-waiver doctrine nationally.

Kirton v. Fields, 997 So. 2d 349 (Fla. 2008) — Florida Supreme Court holding that a parent does not have authority to execute a pre-injury release on behalf of a minor child for participation in a commercial activity. The Florida legislature responded in 2010 with Fla. Stat. § 744.301, which permits parental waivers only for injuries from “inherent risks of the activity” — not for injuries caused by the operator’s own negligence. The current Florida framework requires reframing as negligence rather than inherent risk.

Woodman ex rel. Woodman v. Kera LLC, 486 Mich. 228 (Mich. 2010) — pre-injury liability waivers signed by a parent on behalf of a child are unenforceable under Michigan common law. The Michigan legislature responded with MCL 700.5109 permitting parental releases for non-governmental, nonprofit-organization-sponsored recreational activities. Woodman still governs commercial trampoline parks because they are for-profit LLCs.

Hawkins v. Peart, 37 P.3d 1062 (Utah 2001) — both pre-injury waivers and indemnity provisions purporting to make a parent indemnify the operator for the parent’s child’s injury are invalid in Utah.

Scott v. Pacific West Mountain Resort, 119 Wash. 2d 484 (Wash. 1992) — a parent may not bind a minor child to a pre-injury exculpatory agreement waiving the child’s future cause of action for negligence. The Washington Supreme Court reasoned that Washington law already requires court approval for a parent to settle a child’s claim AFTER an injury has occurred — making it illogical to grant parents broader authority to release the claim BEFORE injury.

Galloway v. State, 790 N.W.2d 252 (Iowa 2010) — pre-injury releases executed by parents purporting to waive minor children’s personal-injury claims violate public policy and are unenforceable. The Iowa Supreme Court reasoned that limits on parents’ authority to make legally enforceable transactions affecting minor children’s interests derive from public policy that children must be accorded protection against improvident decisions of parents.

Blackwell v. Sky High Sports Nashville Operations, LLC, 523 S.W.3d 624 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2017) — Tennessee common law does not allow parents to bind minor children to pre-injury waivers, releases, or indemnity agreements. The court also struck the forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses purporting to send a Tennessee injury to California.

Alicea v. Activelaf, LLC, 218 So. 3d 1001 (La. 2016) — the Louisiana Supreme Court struck Sky Zone’s arbitration clause as adhesionary and unenforceable. Reasoning: arbitration language was “camouflaged” within the agreement; the clause did not specify that BOTH parties were bound; and the contract imposed $5,000 in liquidated damages on the patron for filing suit while leaving Sky Zone free to sue the patron with no penalty. The companion case Duhon v. Activelaf, LLC applied the same reasoning.

Hanks v. Powder Ridge Restaurant Corp., 276 Conn. 314 (Conn. 2005) — recreational waivers are void as against public policy when the facility is offered to the general public for a fee, the waiver is presented as a take-it-or-leave-it adhesion contract, and the operator controls the risks. The reasoning extends directly to every Connecticut commercial trampoline park.

Hiett v. Lake Barcroft Community Ass’n, 244 Va. 191 (Va. 1992) — pre-injury releases for personal injury from one’s own negligence are void as against public policy in Virginia.

New York General Obligations Law § 5-326 — by statute, voids agreements between owners or operators of any “pool, gymnasium, place of amusement or recreation, or similar establishment” and fee-paying users that exempt the owner from liability for negligence. The New York rule is statutory, not case-law-based. New York General Business Law Article 12-C, effective April 18, 2020, adds annual permit, inspection, injury reporting, emergency response plan, first-aid and CPR training, $500,000 minimum liability insurance, and a statutory anti-waiver provision.

The park-friendly outliers

Three states are notably park-friendly. Colorado — C.R.S. § 13-22-107 statutorily authorizes parental pre-injury waivers of minor recreational-injury claims, overturning the Colorado Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Cooper v. Aspen Skiing Co., 48 P.3d 1229. The plaintiff-side leverage in Colorado: the gross-negligence carve-out survives § 13-22-107, and the Colorado Division of Oil and Public Safety incorporates ASTM F2970 by reference at 7 CCR 1101-12, making F2970 violations regulatory non-compliance and arguably negligence per se.

Maryland — BJ’s Wholesale Club, Inc. v. Rosen, 435 Md. 714 (Md. 2013) enforced an exculpatory agreement signed by a parent for a child injured in a free supervised play area at a wholesale club. Rosen turned on the “free” facet: a paid commercial trampoline park is distinguishable on its facts, and the gross-negligence carve-out survives. Maryland is also a contributory-negligence state, which doubles the importance of pleading gross negligence, signer authority, and inadequate-conspicuousness attacks.

California — Torres v. House of Air, LLC (Cal. Ct. App. 2016) enforced a clear, unambiguous, and explicit waiver against an adult plaintiff at a commercial trampoline facility. California is enforcement-friendly for ordinary-negligence claims by adults — but City of Santa Barbara v. Superior Court, 41 Cal. 4th 747 (2007) voids waivers for gross negligence; California Civil Code § 1668 bars waivers of statutory violations; primary assumption of risk applies under Knight v. Jewett; and minor plaintiffs face the parental-indemnity void doctrine that survives the narrow Hohe v. San Diego Unified School District nonprofit carve-out. California catastrophic cases proceed on gross-negligence and minor-plaintiff theories.

The fifty-state synthesis for Texas families

If your family was injured in Texas, the Texas legal framework above governs. If your family is from Texas but the injury occurred outside Texas — at an Urban Air park in Kansas (Collins precedent), at an Altitude park in North Carolina (Matthew Lu precedent), at a Sky Zone in Pennsylvania (post-Santiago), at a Sky Zone in New Jersey (post-Coppi), at a trampoline park in Florida (post-Kirton with the 2010 statutory carve-back), at a New York park subject to GOL § 5-326, at a Connecticut park subject to Hanks — your case is governed by the law of the state where the injury occurred, with Texas’s borrowing statute (§ 16.067) potentially applying if you file the case in Texas. Section 19 of this guide provides the fifty-state quick-reference summary.

The waiver you signed — what it really does and why it usually fails

Every Texas trampoline park slides an iPad across the counter and tells you to sign a “Participation Agreement.” Most parents sign without reading. The agreements all follow a similar template, and every single template has clauses that have already been struck down in reported court decisions across the country. This section takes the actual language — quoted verbatim where available — and pairs each clause with the case law that defeats it.

The eight clause categories every trampoline-park waiver contains

The structure is nearly identical because the industry copies from a handful of template documents.

1. Acknowledgment of risk and assumption of risk — “I understand that trampoline activity is inherently dangerous.”
2. Release of liability — “I release the park, its affiliates, officers, employees, and agents from all claims.”
3. Indemnification and hold-harmless — “I agree to defend and indemnify the park for any claims arising from my participation.”
4. Arbitration clause — “All disputes shall be resolved by binding arbitration,” frequently with a delegation clause.
5. Class-action waiver — “All proceedings will be conducted on an individual basis.”
6. Damages limitation — a capped maximum recovery, sometimes as low as $100.
7. Limitations period — “Any claim must be filed within (typically) one year.”
8. Forum and choice-of-law clause — designating a specific court or arbitration venue and governing law.

The Altitude $100 damages cap — verbatim

The Altitude Trampoline Park corporate terms (fetched from altitudetrampolinepark.com/terms) include this clause: “IN NO EVENT WILL WE AND ALL OF OUR AFFILIATES COLLECTIVELY BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES IN EXCESS OF ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS.”

That clause caps Altitude’s total liability — across the franchisor, the franchisee, and all affiliated entities combined — at one hundred dollars. A quadriplegic spinal cord injury, a dead child, a brain-damaged infant: all capped at $100.

The attack vectors against the Altitude $100 cap. Substantive unconscionability — $100 is dramatically disproportionate to the foreseeable lifetime cost of catastrophic injury at a commercial trampoline park (a single cervical SCI runs $5 million-plus per the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center). A $100 cap on a $5 million foreseeable loss is the textbook definition of substantive unconscionability. Gross-negligence carve-out — in Texas and nearly every state, liability caps do not apply to gross or reckless conduct, per City of Santa Barbara v. Superior Court and Texas Moriel. Public-policy void — under Tunkl v. Regents factors and Connecticut’s Hanks doctrine, where the park offers services to the public for a fee, liability caps become unenforceable public-interest contracts. Minor-child void — a parent cannot cap a minor’s recovery to $100 or to any amount under Munoz v. II Jaz in Texas, Kirton v. Fields in Florida, Hojnowski in New Jersey, Woodman in Michigan, Hawkins in Utah, Scott in Washington, Galloway in Iowa, Blackwell in Tennessee, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 2025 Santiago/Shultz ruling.

The Altitude binding arbitration clause — Dallas forum

Altitude’s terms require all disputes to go to binding arbitration through the American Arbitration Association rather than to court. The proceedings occur “within 50 miles of our (or our successors’ or assigns’) headquarters (currently, Dallas, Texas).” The arbitration is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act.

The clause strips plaintiffs of jury-trial rights and forces all plaintiffs, regardless of residence, to arbitrate in Dallas, Texas. The attack vectors. Forum unconscionability — a Maine parent whose child was injured at a Maine Altitude location has to fly to Dallas with counsel and experts. That is prohibitive-cost unconscionability under Alicea v. Activelaf‘s adhesionary-contract reasoning. Minor-child infirmity — under Santiago/Shultz (Pa. 2025), a parent cannot bind a minor to arbitration. The Altitude arbitration clause cannot bind minors anywhere Santiago/Shultz‘s reasoning persuades a court. Pre-existing non-parent signer — under Gayles v. Sky Zone (NJ App. Div. 2021), a non-parent birthday-party host who signs for other people’s children cannot bind those minors. Many families have this exact fact pattern. Litigation-conduct waiver — under Coppi v. Family Adventures (NJ App. Div. 2025), if Altitude engages in substantive discovery before moving to compel arbitration, the clause is waived. Gross-negligence carve-out — even in arbitration, gross negligence can be proven, the waiver can be voided, and major awards can issue. Damion Collins‘s $15.6 million Kansas arbitration award is the proof.

The Altitude class-action waiver and the poison-pill

Altitude’s terms include: “ALL PROCEEDINGS WILL BE CONDUCTED ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS.” Disputes cannot be class-wide, consolidated with other arbitrations, or joined with third-party claims. The clause includes a poison-pill provision: if a court finds the class-waiver unenforceable, the entire arbitration clause does not apply to that specific dispute.

The plaintiff-side weapon: challenge the class waiver first, then ride the poison-pill out of arbitration entirely. Texas state consumer-protection law (DTPA) may also override class waivers in certain jurisdictions. The Boston 25 News investigation documented 224 EMS calls at five Massachusetts Sky Zone locations over seven years — the kind of pattern that, absent a class waiver, would support class-action treatment. The Sky Zone NJ Consumer Class Action settlement (Locks Law Firm) was preliminarily approved on the basis that Sky Zone’s New Jersey waiver was overly broad and violated New Jersey law on its face. Class-action waivers are not absolute.

The one-year limitations period

The standard Altitude clause: “Plaintiffs must file claims within one year or lose the right permanently.” This shortens the applicable Texas statute of limitations (two years for personal injury, tolled for minors to age twenty under § 16.001) to twelve months. The attack vectors. Substantive unconscionability — a one-year window for a catastrophic injury case, especially one involving pediatric care extending over years, is prohibitively short. Minor-tolling-statute preemption — Texas (and most states) preserves a minor’s claim until two years after the eighteenth birthday. A contractual one-year cap purports to override a legislature’s protective statute, which is often impermissible. Statute overrides contract for public-policy-protected categories.

The Altitude punitive-damages prohibition

Altitude’s terms prohibit punitive damages. The attack: punitive damages are a public-policy remedy for gross misconduct. A contractual clause that contractually extinguishes punitive damages directly contradicts the state’s interest in punishing corporate reckless conduct. The Cosmic Jump $11.485 million verdict included $6 million in punitive damages — if Cosmic Jump’s plaintiff had been routed through a contract that prohibited punitives, the deterrent effect of the verdict would have been gutted. Gross-negligence and reckless and willful-wanton carve-outs apply.

The Altitude indemnification clause

Altitude’s terms require users to “DEFEND, INDEMNIFY AND HOLD US AND ALL OF OUR AFFILIATES AND AGENTS HARMLESS” from claims arising from their use or any breach of terms. This shifts the financial burden of any claim — even claims by third parties against the park — onto the patron. The attack: Hawkins v. Peart (Utah 2001) holds that an indemnity provision shifting financial responsibility to a parent for the parent’s child’s injury is void as against public policy. Most states void indemnification clauses for the indemnitee’s own negligence absent clear, unmistakable language, and even then for gross or willful conduct.

The Altitude franchisee carve-out

Altitude’s terms purport to disclaim Altitude HQ responsibility for the individual park’s operations: “Each local park is independently operated by franchisees, who are separately liable for their operations.” The attack: apparent agency under Sampson (Texas) and Miller v. McDonald’s (federal) reaches the franchisor regardless. Branded uniforms, branded signage, brand websites identifying parks as “our parks/our staff,” brand-controlled booking and payment systems, and central marketing all create reasonable-patron-belief that the franchisor is the operating entity. Damion Collins v. Urban Air Overland Park demonstrated this directly: the franchisor (UATP Management) absorbed 40 percent of a $19.5 million arbitration award even with the arbitration clause intact.

The Sky Zone clause architecture and the Alicea $5,000 liquidated-damages trap

The Sky Zone “Participation Agreement, Release and Assumption of the Risk” includes acknowledgments that the participant could “die or become paralyzed, partially or fully” — language that is itself an admission of foreseeability of catastrophic injury. The clause also requires arbitration through JAMS Rule 16.1 expedited procedures. The Louisiana Supreme Court in Alicea v. Activelaf struck the Sky Zone Lafayette clause for one-sided liquidated damages: if a patron filed a lawsuit against Sky Zone, the patron would be liable for $5,000 in liquidated damages, while Sky Zone retained the right to sue the patron with no equivalent penalty. The court held the clause “camouflaged” within the agreement and adhesionary on its face. The Louisiana Supreme Court’s reasoning is persuasive precedent in any state that applies traditional unconscionability analysis to recreational waivers.

The Boston 25 internal-manual evidence is the gold-standard discovery exhibit in any Sky Zone case: Sky Zone’s internal worker manual contains the warning “BE AWARE OF THE PADS” regarding the mat-frame entrapment hazard documented in repeated Massachusetts lawsuits. The customer waiver contains no such specific warning despite Sky Zone’s documented internal knowledge. The failure-to-warn cause of action overlays directly on the operator’s own internal admission.

The Urban Air clause architecture — the delegation-clause issue

The Urban Air “Release, Assumption of Risk, Waiver of Liability, and Indemnification Agreement” — the version in evidence from the Damion Collins arbitration record dated July 31, 2021 — contains a broadly worded arbitration clause covering disputes related to the SCOPE, VALIDITY, and ARBITRABILITY of the agreement. That is a delegation clause. Under Cerna (Tex. 2025) and Karlin (Mo. 2025), once a delegation clause exists, questions of scope (not just merits) go to the arbitrator. Routing around the delegation clause requires attacking the existence of the agreement, not the scope.

The Collins arbitration is the proof that even with the delegation clause and the arbitration order intact, the substantive waiver can still be voided in arbitration. Arbitrator Thomas Bender ruled the waiver “NOT legally enforceable” because of “systemic failure to bring necessary information to the patron.” The lesson: name UATP Management LLC, UA Attractions LLC, and the manufacturer of any equipment involved in your case. Non-signatory defendants stay in court. The franchisor and the equipment manufacturer face jury trial even when the local Urban Air entity’s claim heads to arbitration.

The fourteen universal waiver attack vectors

These attack vectors apply against virtually any trampoline-park waiver, regardless of chain. Standard issue in every plaintiff-side pleading.

Adhesion / take-it-or-leave-it. The patron had no meaningful opportunity to negotiate; the clause was presented on a tablet at the check-in counter with a line of children waiting. Hanks v. Powder Ridge (Conn. 2005); Alicea v. Activelaf (La. 2016).

Procedural unconscionability. Sign-or-don’t-jump-on-your-six-year-old’s-birthday; tablet; small font; no lawyer; native-language issues; pressure from waiting crowd.

Substantive unconscionability. $100 damages cap (Altitude); $5,000 liquidated damages if you sue (Sky Zone Alicea); one-year limitations period shortening state SOL.

Minor-child substantive-claim void. The child did not sign; the parent lacks authority to extinguish the child’s prospective tort claim. Texas Munoz; New Jersey Hojnowski; Florida Kirton; Michigan Woodman; Utah Hawkins; Washington Scott; Pennsylvania Santiago/Shultz; Iowa Galloway; Tennessee Blackwell.

Non-parent signer. Birthday-party host, aunt, coach, teacher, or grandparent signed for someone else’s child — or the parent’s signature is challenged on signer-authority grounds under Texas Family Code § 153.073.

Non-signing spouse. One parent signed but the other (and the child) did not. Santiago v. Philly Trampoline Park / Shultz v. Sky Zone (Pa. 2025).

Gross negligence and recklessness. The park’s conduct exceeded ordinary negligence — known hazards, prior incidents, internal warnings, understaffing. Cosmic Jump $11.485M; Collins $15.6M; Seitz $3M; Vogt $1.25M.

Failure to warn. Internal worker warnings (Sky Zone “BE AWARE OF THE PADS”) not translated to patron warnings; specific hazard known and not disclosed.

Litigation-conduct waiver of arbitration. Coppi v. Family Adventures (NJ 2025); Morgan v. Sundance, Inc. (U.S. 2022).

Adhesive arbitration — camouflaged and one-sided. Clause buried; no mutuality; one-way liquidated damages. Alicea v. Activelaf (La. 2016).

Public interest under Tunkl factors. Commercial facility open to public, essential service for that public, patron in position of weakness. Tunkl v. Regents (CA); Hanks v. Powder Ridge (CT).

Statutory override. Statute of limitations; minor tolling; consumer protection; unfair-trade-practices. New York General Obligations Law § 5-326 voids recreational-facility waivers by statute.

ASTM and IATP standard-of-care violation. “Inherently dangerous” language cannot immunize specific industry-standard violations.

Bilingual-formation defeat under Delfingen. Texas Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela applies by analogy when the signer’s primary language was Spanish and no translation was offered.

The bottom line on waivers

The waiver is almost never the absolute shield the park’s front desk implies it is. It does not reach gross negligence in any state that matters. It does not bar a minor child’s own tort claim in most states. It does not reach statutory violations. It does not reach reckless or willful misconduct. It is vulnerable to unconscionability, adhesion, and ambiguity attacks. It does not bar a properly filed wrongful-death claim in most states. Do not let the existence of a waiver talk you out of a free consultation.

The staff-training gap — who is actually watching your child

The person standing at the edge of the trampoline court responsible for keeping your child alive is, on average, a sixteen-to-nineteen-year-old minimum-wage worker with two-to-four hours of training, no CPR certification, no first-aid certification, no AED training, no ASTM credential, no IATP credential, a 130-to-150-percent annual turnover rate, and in many documented cases is being illegally overworked by the park itself. This is not opinion. It is the industry’s documented reality.

The industry baseline

Court-monitor pay runs $10 to $14 an hour — at or near minimum wage. Pre-shift training hours for a new court monitor are typically two to four hours before live supervision begins. Monitor age is typically sixteen to nineteen years old; the IATP minimum is sixteen. Annual turnover at chain parks runs 130 to 150 percent — meaning the entire staff turns over more than once a year. Peak-hour monitor-to-jumper ratios often exceed one-to-fifty, against an industry-best-practice ratio of one-to-thirty-two per ASTM F2970 supervision provisions.

The IATP Court Monitor Certification — the basic industry-association safety credential — costs $25 per person. Twenty-five dollars. Cheaper than a meal. The IATP Certified Operator Program, the operator-level certification, costs $249 for IATP members and $375 for non-members. As of recent industry reporting, fewer than a few hundred operators in the entire United States hold the ICO certification — under two percent of the total workforce. IATP membership covers approximately four hundred parks of approximately eleven hundred operating worldwide. Under half of U.S. trampoline parks are members of the industry trade association that offers the $25 safety course.

The state-by-state CPR and AED requirements

Most states impose zero training requirements on trampoline-park staff. The federal government imposes zero requirements. CPSC does not regulate facilities. OSHA is worker-facing, not patron-facing. Two states are notable exceptions.

Utah’s Trampoline Park Safety Act (Title 11 Chapter 63, effective May 14, 2019) requires that during all hours of operation, at least one trampoline-park employee on-site be certified in first aid AND CPR, and that the park have an operable AED on premises.

New York’s General Business Law Article 12-C, §§ 220-228 (effective April 18, 2020) requires facilities to maintain an emergency response plan, an operable AED, and to provide first-aid and CPR training to ALL employees.

Texas requires nothing. A new hire can arrive on Day 1, receive two to four hours of training, and supervise fifty-plus jumpers by Shift 2 — with no CPR certification, no first-aid certification, and no AED training. Most of the United States is in Texas’s category, not Utah’s or New York’s.

The documented child-labor violations as corporate-culture evidence

Trampoline parks have been repeatedly cited by state and federal labor enforcement for violating child-labor laws regarding their own teenage employees. Each is a public-record corporate-culture data point admissible as character-of-operations evidence — and a powerful narrative anchor for the broader argument that a park that won’t follow the law for its own teenage staff cannot be trusted with the safety of its teenage patrons.

Sky Zone Vancouver, Washington — February 2024 — $22,000+ Washington State L&I fine. About forty-five teenage employees did not receive mandated meal breaks; specifically, on more than 250 separate occasions, forty-three teens at Sky Zone Vancouver did not receive meal breaks. Approximately the same number of teens (all sixteen and seventeen years old) worked beyond the hours legally permitted under Washington law on more than 350 separate occasions. Washington law caps teens ages sixteen and seventeen at up to four hours on a school day and no more than twenty hours in a school week — Sky Zone Vancouver violated both. The Columbian and Washington L&I press releases confirm the citation.

Sky Zone Tukwila, Washington — January 2025 — $68,000+ L&I fine. Overworked teen employees, denied meal breaks, over-hours violations. The L&I headline framed Tukwila as “ANOTHER Sky Zone cited for overworking teens” — meaning this is a repeat pattern within the chain.

Birmingham Urban Air — November 2023 — $28,000 U.S. Department of Labor penalty. Thirty-six minor-aged employees under sixteen years old were allowed to work after 7 p.m. on school nights, after 9 p.m. in the summer, more than three hours on school days, and more than eighteen hours per school week, in violation of FLSA child-labor provisions.

Summit Adventure Park Charleston — January 2023 — federal U.S. DOL penalty. Allowed fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds to work outside legally permitted hours under FLSA.

Jacksonville, Florida trampoline park — February 2023 — $43,000 DOL civil penalty. FLSA child-labor violations.

The pattern: a commercial recreational facility that systematically over-schedules, under-pays, and under-trains fourteen-to-seventeen-year-old employees in direct violation of federal and state child-labor laws is the same facility with no meaningful commitment to training those employees to keep paying patrons alive. The labor violation is not collateral. It is a window into operational culture.

The cases where staff training was the key evidence

The Damion Collins arbitration record contains arbitrator Bender’s specific finding that “on-scene monitors had little training and did nothing to stop Collins’s prohibited jumps.” The arbitrator’s “systemic failure to bring necessary information to the patron” finding is inseparable from the training-gap finding. The $15.6 million arbitration award turned substantially on staff inadequacy.

The Matthew Lu wrongful-death allegations: employees failed to properly secure Matthew into his safety harness. The park’s public statement: “human error” by the employee. The post-incident response: permanent removal of the climbing-wall attraction. Both statements are admission-grade evidence of the staff-training failure.

The Mathew Knight Georgia $3.5 million verdict turned on a trampoline-park staff member instructing the plaintiff to perform the unsafe jump that produced an open tibia-fibula fracture with downstream DVT and permanent disability. The four-camera surveillance “glitch” at the precise moment of the staff instruction produced an adverse-inference instruction at trial.

The Get Air Pennsylvania $412,445 verdict cited inadequate staffing as the proximate cause of the seven-year-old’s PCL avulsion fracture.

The Flight Deck Fort Worth four-year-old case turned on the rule-on-paper-but-not-enforced pattern: the park had a single-occupancy rule on signage and in its own policies. Staff did not enforce it.

The AirMaxx / Seitz $3 million paralysis settlement cited AirMaxx’s failure to meet IATP safety standards plus prior-incident knowledge of guests hitting the bottom of the foam pit.

The Boston 25 / Sky Zone “BE AWARE OF THE PADS” internal worker manual obtained in Massachusetts litigation is the gold-standard discovery exhibit. Sky Zone’s own internal training materials warned employees about the mat-frame hazard while issuing no equivalent warning to customers. Every Sky Zone catastrophic case our firm screens demands this manual by name in Rule 34 document requests.

The discovery playbook

The plaintiff-side evidentiary blueprint for proving the training gap in a specific case includes documents demanded under Rule 34 (employee training manuals and curricula in use on the date of injury and for three years prior; written Emergency Action Plans with revision history; individual personnel files for every employee on shift including hire date, prior employment, age at hire, training completion records, IATP and CPR and first-aid and AED certification records and expiration dates; staffing schedules, time-clock data, and peak-hour patron counts to calculate actual monitor-to-jumper ratios); Rule 30(b)(6) corporate-deposition topics (the written training curriculum’s length and content; the qualifications of every trainer; the actual in-seat training hours for employees on shift; certification status; annual safety-retraining frequency and content per ASTM F2970; monitor-to-jumper ratio policy versus actual ratio at time of injury; single-occupancy enforcement processes and documentation; chain-wide prior-incident history at the location and at sister locations; the franchisor’s visibility into those incidents); third-party subpoenas (state Department of Labor and L&I records; U.S. DOL Wage and Hour Division FOIA for federal child-labor investigations involving the chain; state amusement-ride or trampoline-park regulator records; local fire and EMS CAD dispatch logs; OSHA establishment records; IATP records custodian subpoena for membership and certification history); and depositions of individual employees (the specific monitor; the shift supervisor; the general manager; the training director; the HR manager; the franchisor’s operations and training liaison).

The closing-argument narrative the staff-training discovery produces: a seventeen-year-old, with three hours of training, no CPR certification, no IATP credential, working at a company that was fined by the state for illegally overworking her peers, was the person responsible for watching the thirteen children on a trampoline court at 8:47 p.m. on a Saturday night. That is the gap that produced the catastrophic injury.

The rule vacuum — what trampoline parks should regulate but don’t

For every injury mechanism at a trampoline park, there is a set of behaviors, pre-conditions, and environmental variables that a responsibly-operated facility would control. Most parks do not control them. They have no written policy on them. They don’t train staff to watch for them. They don’t screen patrons for them. When a child is hurt by one of these unregulated behaviors, the park’s defense is “the waiver covered it.” It didn’t.

Food, drink, gum, and candy during jumping

No ASTM F2970 provision, no Texas statute, and no IATP-level rule prohibits eating, drinking, gum-chewing, or candy-sucking while on the trampoline court. Most parks operate concession stands and birthday-party rooms within twenty to fifty feet of the active jump court with no barrier against carrying food onto the surface. No park in the public record mandates a “no food during jumping” rule, a minimum digestive-rest interval after eating, or a gum or candy or loose-object check at entry to the jump floor.

The medical risk: the AAP identifies choking on food as a leading cause of injury and death in children, with hot dogs, hard candy, gum, and grapes among the top choking-hazard rankings. Vigorous physical activity immediately after eating significantly increases the risk of aspiration of food into the airway during deep breathing, vomiting from post-exertion nausea or gastric reflux, and aspiration of vomit — particularly catastrophic for a patron who has just landed head-first (cervical injury plus aspiration equals airway emergency). Vomiting after impact is also a recognized sign of concussion or TBI. In a park with no trained medical responders and often no AED or CPR-certified staff, a patron who aspirates during or after a fall can decompensate and die in minutes.

Medical pre-screening

No U.S. trampoline park performs formal medical intake screening. The entire screening process is a patron (or parent) clicking through a kiosk waiver. No ASTM provision, no IATP rule, no Texas statute requires a park to ask whether the patron has a heart condition, a recent surgery or ongoing injury, epilepsy or seizure disorder, pregnancy (despite ACOG guidance against falls during pregnancy), a blood-clotting disorder, a back or neck condition, an ear or vestibular disorder, or recent intoxication. The waiver says “you represent you are physically fit to jump” — and the park treats that representation as sufficient.

The pregnancy case is particularly stark. Rebounderz — a major trampoline-park chain — publicly blogged advice that patrons should not jump while pregnant (“Do Not Trampoline While Pregnant Part 2”). Rebounderz does not screen for pregnancy at entry. The chain itself published the warning on its own marketing channel but did not incorporate that knowledge into the intake process. ACOG recommends avoiding activities with increased risk of falling during pregnancy. Risks documented in the medical literature include miscarriage, placental abruption, premature labor, and fetal trauma from impact and jolt. Rebounderz’s own blog post is admissible evidence in any pregnancy-related case.

Clothing hazards — drawstrings, hoods, jewelry

Most parks have a “remove all jewelry” sign. Enforcement is inconsistent to nonexistent. No park has a written rule prohibiting drawstring hoods, jackets with waist drawstrings, or neck-pendant jewelry. Parks sell mandatory grip-sock rentals as a profit center while waving through a child in a pullover hoodie with a 24-inch drawstring. The CPSC, as of 2026, recalled SEGMART Mini Round Toddler Trampolines due to STRANGULATION HAZARD — proving the industry and regulators recognize the strangulation mechanism, just not at the park-facility level. The drawstring-entrapment-in-enclosure-netting mechanism (the same mechanism the CPSC cites in playground-drawstring deaths and the 1994 CPSC Drawstring Guidelines for children’s upper-body clothing) reaches commercial trampoline parks identically. Parks ought to mandate removal of drawstring garments at entry, provide replacement clothing (the model used by UK PAS 5000:2017), enforce a no-jewelry rule via entry monitor with lockers provided, and require parental acknowledgment at check-in that drawstring and loose-clothing hazards have been removed. None of those rules exist at most U.S. parks.

Hair entrapment

Long unbraided hair can wrap around trampoline springs, through netting gaps, and around ventilation or fan intake at some parks. Backyard-trampoline literature documents hair-tourniquet injuries to fingers and hair-strangulation near spring housings. Medical literature on “rotational hair entrapment” notes the force required to tear scalp tissue is less than the force generated by a single trampoline bounce — meaning a child whose hair catches at full rebound can sustain scalp avulsion. No park in the public record has a rule requiring long hair to be braided or contained before entry to the jump floor.

Intoxication of patrons and staff

No park in the public record has a written policy requiring staff sobriety testing, random drug testing, or breath-analysis for employees responsible for patron safety. No park visibly screens adult patrons for intoxication at entry, even though many parks host evening “adult nights” or 21+ glow events where alcohol is served or where patrons arrive after drinking elsewhere. The injury mechanism: an intoxicated patron has impaired balance, delayed reaction, increased likelihood of attempting flips or unauthorized maneuvers, and reduced responsiveness to monitor instruction. An intoxicated staff member cannot accurately monitor fifty-plus jumpers, cannot execute Emergency Action Plan under pressure, cannot correctly evaluate whether a fall requires 911 dispatch, and cannot administer first aid. Parks that serve alcohol (Launch’s Krave bar; Altitude San Antonio’s full-service restaurant; Cosmic Air’s flat-fee F&B) trigger Texas dram-shop liability for over-service.

Glow nights, lighting, heat, hydration, noise

“Glow in the Dark” events with reduced lighting have been confirmed as contributing factors in injury litigation. UV blacklight plus fluorescent material does not improve depth or distance perception — it makes some things visible while making normal spatial perception impossible. A monitor cannot clearly see a small child in a dark corner. No ASTM F2970 provision mandates a minimum ambient light level, a maximum patron density during reduced-lighting events, or a higher monitor-to-jumper ratio for Glow Nights. Parks typically run Glow Nights with the same or lower staffing as daytime. Discovery target in a Glow Night case: pull the park’s ambient-light measurements (lux meters), compare to normal operating conditions, and pair with the same-or-lower staffing evidence to support a gross-negligence-grade finding.

Heat and hydration: no park in the public record mandates heat-stress monitoring, mandatory hydration breaks, or temperature caps on the jump floor. Indoor parks are kept warm; jumpers generate substantial body heat; rhabdomyolysis from extended jumping is documented. Heat exhaustion in children presents as confusion, pallor, and irritability — and most teenage staff have no training to recognize it.

Noise: high ambient noise (music, dozens of children, attraction mechanisms) makes verbal safety warnings inaudible. Staff cannot verbally prevent a dangerous maneuver because the patron cannot hear them. Most parks rely on verbal instruction only.

Rest intervals and the “jump all day” pricing model

No park in the public record requires mandatory rest intervals between jump sessions. Park season passes and “jump all day” pricing models actively incentivize multi-hour, high-intensity jumping. Rhabdomyolysis, compartment syndrome, and fatigue-related impact injuries are predictable outputs of an unregulated-duration business model. A responsibly-operated facility would impose session-length caps (60-minute sessions with 15-minute rest), visible wristband color-coding showing session entry time, hydration-break enforcement tied to session structure, and staff training to recognize fatigue (wobbly landings, dropping arms, slower rebounds, sitting down mid-jump).

Concurrent attractions and traffic patterns

Trampoline parks routinely run open jump, dodgeball, foam pit, ninja course, basketball dunk, and fitness classes simultaneously in the same open facility. No ASTM F2970 provision governs inter-attraction traffic patterns. Transition points between attractions — getting off a trampoline onto a padded walkway, crossing the boundary between open jump and dodgeball — are documented injury hotspots. The Get Air Pennsylvania $412,445 case turned on a platform-to-trampoline transition for a seven-year-old. The Flight Deck Fort Worth four-year-old case turned on multiple jumpers being allowed onto the same trampoline via unenforced boundary. A responsible operator would adopt a written traffic-flow policy, dedicated transition monitors at attraction boundaries, one-way-flow design at high-traffic points, and scheduling blocks separating dodgeball and open-jump times.

Pre-existing injury re-entry

No park screens at entry for current injuries. A child who sprained an ankle three days ago is admitted to the jump floor today without a single question. No park requires return-to-play medical clearance for patrons previously injured at the facility. The park’s “our records show you were injured here last month” data is literally never acted on. The waiver disclaims “known conditions” but relies on self-reporting with no downstream check. Litigation implication: return-patient data is discoverable. Demand the park’s patron-tracking data (wristband scans, season-pass records, birthday-party rosters) and cross-reference against incident reports. A patron injured on Visit 1 who returned for Visit 2 and was injured again is a factual pattern supporting both foreseeability and failure-to-act — gross-negligence territory.

Adjacent attractions — go-karts, climbing walls, Sky Riders, ninja courses

Trampoline parks are no longer trampoline parks. Over the past five-to-eight years, every major chain — Sky Zone, Urban Air, DEFY, Altitude, Launch, Rockin’ Jump — has pivoted toward the family entertainment center model: trampoline decks PLUS go-karts, indoor coasters, climbing walls, ropes courses, ninja-warrior courses, foam pits replaced by airbag stunt bags, axe-throwing, VR rigs, escape rooms, laser tag, mini-golf, batting cages, arcade redemption, restaurant and bar service, birthday-party rooms, and influencer-tied content centers. The same minimum-wage attendant supervises all of it. The same waiver attempts to cover all of it. The same insurer underwrites all of it. The same corporate parent collects revenue from all of it. The same lobby — the trampoline-park industry, which wrote ASTM F2970 — writes the standards for these adjacent attractions too. The “trampoline” in “trampoline park” increasingly means “everything BUT the trampoline.”

Go-kart and electric-kart attractions — the Emma Riddle pattern

Urban Air introduced electric-kart tracks at many post-2020 locations. Other chains (Altitude, Launch FEC, Cosmic Air, Big Air) followed. The model: a small indoor go-kart track with electric karts, a token-arcade payment system, and minimum-wage attendants monitoring multiple attractions simultaneously.

The fatality precedent is Emma Riddle, age 6, Urban Air Trampoline & Adventure Park, Port St. Lucie, Florida (9020 South US Highway 1), December 6, 2025. Mechanical-and-pedal-throttle failure: the kart began braking and accelerating erratically, failed to respond to pedal inputs, and surged forward at high speed without the mother pressing the accelerator. The mechanisms in any go-kart-at-trampoline-park case include mechanical or pedal-throttle failure, brake-system failure, restraint-system failure (no seatbelt or improperly secured seatbelt, especially with small children), track-collision injuries, driver-error injuries (a six-year-old driving a kart capable of significant speed — foreseeability is total), and eye or face injuries from track debris.

The defendants: operator LLC, franchisee, franchisor, corporate parent, PE sponsor, the kart manufacturer, the supplier of the electronic pedal-throttle control unit, the assembler-installer, the track designer, the HVAC and facility contractor (for CO and indoor-air-quality cases), and the state regulator under the Texas Department of Insurance Class B regime when the kart is mechanized. Discovery targets: kart maintenance log, kart software audit log with timestamp and telemetry, pedal-throttle calibration history, recall history, CPSC SaferProducts.gov narratives for the kart model, insurance policy with separate motorized-vehicle endorsement, landlord-tenant lease (mechanical-ride disclosures).

The waiver-scope-gap argument: the trampoline-park waiver was drafted for trampoline use. Most waivers do not specifically reference go-karts. The Section F.0.1 #8 scope-of-waiver gap applies — a trampoline-only waiver may not cover a non-trampoline attraction injury.

Sky Rider and indoor roller coasters — the Urban Air chain pattern

Urban Air’s signature “Sky Rider” branded indoor zipline-coaster has produced a chain-wide pattern of strangulation-by-harness-cord and fall-from-height failures: Newnan GA (June 27, 2023, six-year-old strangled, father climbed twelve-foot netting himself); Bloomingdale IL (adult mother strangled by harness cord); Illinois 2022 (three-year-old strangulation); Florida and Reno 2019 (Sky Rider falls); Las Vegas Spy Ninjas HQ (ten-year-old, twenty-foot fall, harness “undone, detached,” concussion plus multiple broken bones plus collapsed lung). Same attraction. Same mechanism. Different children. That is not coincidence — it is a pattern, and Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) and its state-law analogues make the chain-wide pattern admissible.

Defendants in any Sky Rider case: UA Attractions, LLC (the Urban Air pass-through manufacturer entity, also sued in Damion Collins); the franchisor; the harness and lanyard manufacturer; the auto-belay system manufacturer; the rope and cord supplier; the installer. Demand chain-wide incident-report subpoena under FRE 404(b) and equivalent state rules.

Climbing walls and ropes courses

Most multi-attraction parks now feature 20-to-30-foot indoor climbing walls with auto-belay systems. Some — Altitude San Antonio at 30 feet — market the height as a feature. Ropes courses (overhead obstacle courses with harnesses) are common at Urban Air’s “Adventure Hub,” Altitude, and some Sky Zone FEC variants.

The fatality precedent is Matthew Lu, age 12, Altitude Trampoline Park Gastonia, North Carolina, 2019. Birthday party. Climbed the wall. Employees failed to secure the harness. Fell over twenty feet onto concrete. Lethal head trauma. Wrongful-death suit named Altitude Gastonia, parent ATP Alpha, and Ropes Courses, Inc. as the climbing-wall designer and manufacturer. Altitude publicly blamed “human error” by an employee and permanently removed the climbing wall. Both statements are admission-grade evidence.

The Texas climbing-wall anchor is the Lakhani / Sugar Land Urban Air case discussed throughout this guide. The pattern continues at Urban Air Denver “Leap of Faith” (seven-year-old, twenty-foot fall, broken spine and arm, park failed to report to Colorado DOPS) and at Urban Air Spy Ninjas HQ Las Vegas (ten-year-old zipline fall).

Standards: the Climbing Wall Association (CWA) practice standards apply. ASTM F2970 does not specifically cover climbing walls. EN 12572 is the European climbing-wall standard. Defendants: operator, franchisee, franchisor, corporate parent, Ropes Courses Inc. or equivalent designer-manufacturer, the auto-belay manufacturer (Perfect Descent or Head Rush TRUBLUE), harness and lanyard manufacturer, installer, certifier, CWA-affiliated inspector.

Ninja-warrior and parkour courses

Following the popularity of NBC’s American Ninja Warrior, many chains added ninja-warrior obstacle courses. Specialty operators emerged: Ninja Nation, Ninja Kidz Action Park, Iron Sports, Sam Sann Warriors, Move Sport Ninja, Apex Ninja, Power Ninja Warriors, USA Ninja Challenge. House of Air Crowley TX is co-branded as House of Air × Ninja Kidz Action Park under an official Ninja Kidz TV YouTube partnership (40 million-plus subscribers). Mechanisms: warped-wall fall and mat-edge entrapment; salmon-ladder shoulder dislocation and brachial-plexus injury; cliffhanger fall onto pad (the Mathew Knight Georgia $3.5 million Ninja’s Course mechanism); Devil’s-Steps grip failure; Spinning-Log rotational injury; quad-steps mistimed-jump spiral fracture; ankle and wrist fractures from drop landings on under-cushioned mats.

The influencer-encouraged-stunt issue: Ninja Kidz TV YouTube channel and similar influencer brands depict children attempting maneuvers that result in injuries the parks then cite as “rule violations.” But the parks’ own marketing amplifies the same content. The discovery target is the chain’s social-media archive plus influencer and brand-ambassador agreements.

Airbag stunt bags — the foam-pit replacement

Following Ty Thomasson’s 2012 fatality and subsequent industry pressure, many parks have replaced foam pits with inflatable airbag stunt bags. Mechanisms: underinflation leading to bottoming-out; overinflation producing reflexive bounce-back at unexpected angles; pressure leak between PSI checks; patch failure where prior repairs were made; two-jumper collision in the bag; submerged-entrapment when the bag deflates with a jumper in it. Defendants: airbag manufacturer (BAGJUMP, Landing Pads, FoamCubeSafety); operator; installer; PSI-monitoring service vendor. Discovery targets: airbag PSI logs, leak-test records, patch and repair history, manufacturer’s recommended PSI range, inspection-by-attendant cadence, replacement schedule.

Other adjacent attractions

Axe-throwing at FEC trampoline parks (Launch, some Cosmic Air, some Urban Air) — mechanisms include axe rebound, axe slip mid-throw, bystander injury from over-the-fence rebound, alcohol-intoxication-assisted negligent throwing, foot or leg injury from dropped axe. WATL safety guidelines apply. Texas dram-shop liability where alcohol service is involved.

Virtual reality rigs — VR pods and free-roam VR rooms at Sky Zone, Launch, Cosmic Air, Altitude. Mechanisms: trip-and-fall while wearing the headset (no peripheral vision); disorientation and motion sickness; headset malfunction or strap failure; eye injury from headset components; photosensitive seizure from screen flicker. Product liability against the VR manufacturer.

Escape rooms at multi-attraction parks — mechanisms include asphyxiation if door fails to release in emergency (the 2019 Polish escape-room fire that killed five teen girls is the cautionary precedent); fall on stairs in dim lighting; tripping on theatrical props; pyrotechnic or smoke-effect injury; panic-attack or claustrophobia in patrons unaware of the locked-door architecture. NFPA 101 Life Safety Code applies to assembly occupancies.

Laser tag arenas — trip-and-fall in dim lighting, collision with structures, respiratory irritation from fog machines, vest-strap injury, laser-eye injury (very rare with consumer-grade systems but possible with malfunction).

Arcade redemption gaming — finger-and-hand injuries from claw-game and crane-game machinery; trip-and-fall on cords; child-predator concerns at “drop-off zones” without supervision; food-allergy reaction from prize-counter candy.

Batting cages — ball-strike injury (eye, head, body); cage-net failure; pitching-machine malfunction. ASTM F2107 governs.

Mini-golf — trip-and-fall (uneven course); club-swing injury to bystander; theme-prop entrapment; lighting-related fall.

Trampoline-fitness classes (rebounder fitness) — Sky Zone “SkyFit,” Altitude “Altitude Fit,” iRise programming. Mechanisms: overuse injuries, rhabdomyolysis (heightened risk in fitness-class context), cardiac event in older adult participants without medical screening.

Inflatable obstacle courses and inflatable slides — Texas regulatory hook: inflatable obstacle courses, bungee trampolines, and inflatable slides INSIDE a Texas trampoline park ARE covered by Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 as Class B amusement rides (annual TDI inspection plus $1 million CSL insurance plus posted compliance sticker required under §§ 2151.1015(b), 2151.103, 2151.104). The trampoline deck is excluded; the inflatable is not. Plead the inflatable separately. Pull the TDI inspection record under Texas Government Code Chapter 552.

FEC bar and restaurant service — Launch West Houston Krave bar, Altitude San Antonio full-service restaurant, Cosmic Air flat-fee F&B, beer and wine service for adults during birthday parties. Mechanisms: food poisoning (separate negligence plus DTPA), slip-and-fall on spilled drinks or food, allergen exposure without ingredient disclosure (anaphylaxis), Texas dram-shop liability, and the parental-supervision-elsewhere admission baked into the chain’s marketing (“relax during a kid’s party”) that undermines comparative-fault assignment to parents.

The common-denominator litigation framework for every adjacent attraction

Six questions every adjacent-attraction injury runs through:

1. Was the waiver drafted for THIS attraction, or grandfathered from a trampoline-only template? Most waivers do not specifically reference go-karts, climbing walls, axe-throwing, or escape rooms. Scope-of-waiver gap.
2. Does the state regulator cover this attraction even when the trampoline deck is excluded? Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 Class B inflatables: yes. Most other state regimes also cover mechanized rides (go-karts, indoor coasters) even when trampolines are excluded.
3. Is the manufacturer of this attraction a separate product-liability defendant? Almost always yes — Ropes Courses Inc., UA Attractions LLC, the kart manufacturer, the airbag manufacturer, the inflatable manufacturer, the auto-belay manufacturer.
4. Does the chain’s marketing for this attraction encourage rule-violating use? If the brand’s social-media or influencer content depicts maneuvers the brand later cites as rule violations, the brand’s own content is evidence of encouragement.
5. Does the operator have a chain-wide pattern of incidents on this attraction? If yes, chain-wide subpoena reveals foreseeability plus pattern-and-practice plus punitive-damages exposure.
6. Did the franchisor’s audit identify this attraction’s compliance gap? Franchisor inspection records that flagged the attraction without compelling remediation establish direct franchisor liability.

Backyard and residential trampoline cases

The backyard residential trampoline produces the volume of trampoline injuries in Texas. Commercial parks get the headlines — Cosmic Jump, Lakhani, Anthony Duran, Emma Riddle. The CPSC NEISS data show the bulk of injuries originate at home. The legal architecture for a backyard case is different from a commercial-park case. There is no waiver. There is no arbitration clause. The homeowner’s insurance probably does not cover it. The attractive-nuisance doctrine reaches every uninvited child in the neighborhood. The product-liability theory reaches the manufacturer with a documented CPSC recall history. The retailer — Walmart, Amazon, Target, Costco — is increasingly reachable as a seller under expanding marketplace-platform doctrine.

The CPSC recall history every backyard case checks first

For any backyard trampoline injury, the first question is whether the specific manufacturer and model has a CPSC recall in its history. The recall is the foundation of the product-liability theory.

Hedstrom Corp. — 2003 Recall, CPSC Recall No. 03-168. Approximately 700 reports of welds breaking on the frame rails during use. Ten minor injuries at time of recall. Sold at Bradlees Stores and other mass retailers. Hedstrom’s backyard-gym-set lineage included additional recalls in 1990 and 2001, establishing the manufacturer’s pattern.

Jumpking Inc. — January 24, 2005 Recall, CPSC Recall No. 05-092. Approximately 1 million trampolines and 296,000 “FunRing” enclosures recalled. Defects: welds on the frame breaking during use, plus mounting brackets of FunRing enclosures with sharp edges causing lacerations. 47 reports of weld breakage with 21 injury reports including concussion, head, neck, back injuries, broken arm, sprains, lacerations, and bruises. 12 additional incident reports from enclosure-bracket sharp edges, including 9 reports of serious lacerations to children. Manufacturer based in Mesquite, Texas. One of the largest consumer-product recalls in U.S. trampoline history.

Skywalker Holdings — May 26, 2009 Recall, CPSC Recall No. 09-230. Approximately 60,000 thirteen-foot square trampoline-and-enclosure combos. Straps holding the top of the enclosure to the side poles can fail, allowing the enclosure to drop and the user to fall from the trampoline. At least 250 reports of strap breakage at time of recall.

Aviva Sports — 2009 Recall. Aviva Sports trampolines recalled for fall hazard.

Sportspower / BouncePro (Walmart exclusive) — May 2012 and January 2013 Recalls. Initial recall: BouncePro 14-foot trampolines with brown Tetlon netting, model TR-14-63-A. Netting breaks; children fall through. 17 reports of net breakage; 11 injuries (broken bones, back and neck injuries, contusions). Walmart-exclusive distribution February 2009 through March 2011. Approximately 92,000 units. Expanded recall January 2013: added black Tetlon netting versions; 9 additional breakage reports; 5 additional injuries. Total: approximately 120,000 units. Walmart’s exclusive distribution makes Walmart a co-defendant under expanding retailer-as-seller doctrine.

Super Jumper — August 2019 Recall. 23,000 14-foot and 16-foot trampolines and combos sold without reinforcement clamps. Welds on the metal railings supporting the trampoline weakened and broke, causing falls. 97 consumer reports of weld failures. Sold at Wayfair.com, Amazon.com, Hayneedle.com, and Overstock.com. Sale window November 2011 through June 2019 — nearly eight years of unrestrained sale. Multiple law firms have active Super Jumper recall-lawsuit pipelines.

JumpSport — 2019 Recall. 11,300 mini folding trampolines (U.S.) plus 1,200 in Canada. Frame can forcefully hit the user during incorrect unfolding or folding. 9 injury reports including cuts, bruises, dental and facial injuries. Sold on Amazon.com, Costco.com, JumpSport.com, and specialty fitness retailers, January 2011 through November 2018, $250 to $500. JumpSport characterized this as an “instructions and warning label” recall — but plaintiffs may attack the characterization as failure-to-warn or inadequate instructions.

SEGMART — 2026 Recall. Mini Round Toddler Trampolines recalled due to STRANGULATION HAZARD; RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH. The most recent in-force recall. The strangulation mechanism the CPSC has been warning about on children’s drawstring clothing since the 1994 CPSC Drawstring Guidelines now applied to a contemporary product-defect category.

Other documented recalls in the cumulative knowledge base include Vuly enclosure-netting and pole-defect recalls; ALDI “Crane” welding and frame-failure recalls; Bravo Sports / Pure Fun / Upper Bounce enclosure and spring recalls; Sky Bound enclosure recalls; and Bazoongi children’s trampoline recalls. For any backyard case, the first step is to obtain the exact manufacturer, model, and purchase-date information, then cross-reference against the CPSC recall database at cpsc.gov/Recalls.

The Anderson v. Hedstrom Corp. precedent

Anderson v. Hedstrom Corp., 76 F. Supp. 2d 422 (S.D.N.Y. 1999). The foundational consumer-trampoline product-liability decision. Plaintiff Anderson fell from a Hedstrom trampoline. Claims included negligence, strict liability, and breach of implied warranties. Specific allegations: the trampoline as designed and marketed was not reasonably safe for its intended use; a SAFER DESIGN WAS AVAILABLE at the time of manufacture; defendants offered the product without providing safer options, specifically the absence of a safety cage or enclosure and the absence of a center marking on the jumping mat to help users stay centered and avoid spring or frame contact. The retailer (Bradlees Stores) was named as a co-defendant. Anderson is the precedent that establishes the safer-alternative-design theory for residential trampolines and demonstrates that retailer liability for selling a defectively-designed consumer product is viable.

Springfree Trampoline Australia Pty Ltd v. Forostenko

The Queensland Court of Appeal’s 2024 decision in Springfree Trampoline Australia Pty Ltd v. Forostenko [2024] QCA 255 is instructive although not binding in U.S. courts. The Springfree springless design has been marketed as eliminating ninety percent of trampoline injuries. The Australian appellate court found that even where a safety defect existed under § 9 of Schedule 2 of the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010, the warning-causation chain broke because the plaintiff had failed to read the instructions and warnings. The U.S. lesson: in any failure-to-warn case, document that the user actually engaged with the warnings or that the warnings were inadequate to be noticed. The Forostenko ruling is a reminder that even “safer” products produce litigated injuries.

The Texas attractive-nuisance doctrine for backyard cases

Texas recognizes the attractive-nuisance doctrine for child trespassers under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 339. The five elements: (1) the property owner knew or should have known children were likely to trespass; (2) the owner’s use of the property created a hazardous condition that could injure children; (3) children could not appreciate the risk due to their age; (4) the magnitude of the risk to the child outweighed the burden of remediation to the owner; (5) the owner failed to exercise reasonable care to eliminate the danger or protect the child.

Texas applies the doctrine to children of “tender years” who cannot appreciate the danger. Trampolines are textbook attractive nuisances. An accessible backyard trampoline — unfenced, with a ladder in place, visible from neighboring yards, ladder accessible to neighbor children — is among the most-cited attractive-nuisance examples alongside swimming pools and construction equipment. Protective measures that typically defeat liability (and that plaintiffs use as a benchmark to show failure): fenced enclosure around the trampoline; locked gate when not in use; ladder removed and stored when not in use; net or enclosure on the trampoline; padded springs and frame; supervision at all times of active use; warning signage on fence or gate. The Texas backyard homeowner who fails to take these precautions faces direct premises-liability exposure to neighbor-child injuries.

Texas homeowner premises-liability doctrine

Texas premises-liability doctrine for invited children (guests) follows Restatement (Second) § 343. The homeowner has a duty to inspect, discover, warn of, and remedy dangerous conditions. Common pled breaches in backyard trampoline cases: failure to enforce the one-jumper rule (Nysted double-bounce physics); failure to maintain the trampoline (torn mats, worn springs, corroded frame welds); failure to supervise children using the trampoline; failure to restrict access (no locked gate, ladder left on); failure to disclose a known defect (e.g., prior spring breakage). The Maya Murphy P.C. seven-year-old Naugatuck Connecticut Hedstrom case ($65,000 settlement) is a doctrinal template: the trampoline itself was not defective; the supervision was. The owner broke the one-jumper-at-a-time rule and failed to adequately supervise.

The Texas homeowners insurance reality — the trampoline-exclusion problem

The majority of U.S. homeowners’ insurance policies — HO-3 and HO-5 standard forms — either EXCLUDE trampoline-related injuries entirely or REQUIRE a specific trampoline endorsement at additional premium with safety-net requirements, age limits, and homeowner-indemnification-of-carrier provisions. Carrier patterns: State Farm covers only with safety conditions met (safety net, padded springs, limited access); offers a 14-percent discount for springless trampolines (2024); without safety measures, State Farm won’t cover. Allstate requires a trampoline endorsement to cover liability and property damage. Liberty Mutual, Farmers, Nationwide, Travelers vary by state filing. Many regional carriers refuse trampoline coverage entirely.

The undisclosed-trampoline coverage-denial pattern: most homeowners do not tell their insurer they bought a trampoline. When an injury happens and the carrier discovers the undisclosed equipment, the carrier may deny coverage for the specific claim, cancel the policy prospectively, or in extreme cases rescind ab initio. The litigation implication: in every backyard case, identify the homeowner’s PRIMARY GL policy, identify ANY UMBRELLA POLICY (often $1 million to $5 million additional liability, sometimes overriding HO exclusions), check for landlord coverage if the property is rented, and identify retailer-product-liability and manufacturer-product-liability paths to deeper pockets.

Texas homeowner failure to disclose to the insurer is generally not the plaintiff’s problem. Most states do not transfer the homeowner’s disclosure obligation onto the injured-child plaintiff. The homeowner’s failure-to-disclose is between the homeowner and the carrier; the plaintiff can still pursue the underlying tort judgment against the homeowner’s personal assets if insurance denies coverage. Strategically, sometimes pursuing the manufacturer or the retailer is more collectible than pursuing a homeowner with denied coverage.

The Bolger v. Amazon doctrine — Walmart and Amazon as sellers

The marketplace-platform-as-seller doctrine has expanded substantially since 2019. Oberdorf v. Amazon.com, Inc., 930 F.3d 143 (3d Cir. 2019) (later vacated en banc but persuasive authority) and Bolger v. Amazon.com, LLC, 53 Cal. App. 5th 431 (2020) treat marketplace platforms as “sellers” for strict-product-liability purposes when the platform participates substantially in the chain of distribution. Walmart’s private-label Bouncepro trampolines make Walmart the seller. Amazon’s private-label Amazon Basics trampolines similarly. The trademarked products distributed exclusively through these channels reach the retailer directly under strict product liability in California, and the doctrine is expanding into Texas and other states.

The complete eleven-defendant backyard case stack

For any backyard residential trampoline injury our firm screens, the defendants worked up include: (1) the homeowner; (2) the homeowner’s homeowners-insurance carrier; (3) the trampoline manufacturer; (4) the retailer (Walmart, Amazon, Target, Costco); (5) the importer if foreign-made; (6) the marketplace operator (Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair); (7) the installer or assembler if professional installation occurred; (8) the HOA, landlord, or property owner if HOA common area or rental; (9) the after-market component seller if a replacement net, mat, or spring failed; (10) any supervising adult other than the homeowner (babysitter, family friend, coach); (11) the previous owner of a used or second-hand trampoline (Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, estate sales — strict-liability theories may reach negligent sale of a known-defective product).

Texas secondary venues — schools, camps, daycares, churches, gyms

School trampoline injuries face the Texas Tort Claims Act framework for public schools (notice requirements, damages caps, shorter SOL). Private schools face full tort liability. The AAP position that trampolines should NOT be used in routine PE classes is direct evidence of negligence — a school using a trampoline at all operates against documented pediatric medical consensus. Summer-camp injuries face camp-operator liability with American Camp Association accreditation standards as the benchmark for negligent supervision and inadequate staff qualifications. Daycare cases are particularly strong because most state child-care licensing rules prohibit trampoline use at licensed daycare facilities — a Texas daycare operating a trampoline is in violation of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services rules, supporting a negligence-per-se argument. HOA common-area trampoline injuries reach the HOA master GL policy and, in egregious cases, individual board members through D&O coverage. Gymnastics and cheerleading facilities with tumble tracks, rebounders, and spring floors face professional-context duty of care under USA Gymnastics or USASF standards. Religious organizations and youth ministries face standard premises-liability and negligent-supervision theories.

Insurance and damages

Every Texas trampoline-park case is, ultimately, an insurance-access problem. The defendant’s insurance — and the insurance towers above it — is what funds settlements and judgments. The defense’s standard move is to make plaintiffs believe there is only one layer (the operator’s primary general liability) and that the limit is “only $1 million.” Our job is to find every layer and make every layer pay.

The 12-layer commercial-park insurance map

Layer 1: Operator LLC primary GL — typically $1 million to $5 million per occurrence.

Layer 2: Operator LLC umbrella — $2 million to $10 million.

Layer 3: Franchisee umbrella — $5 million to $25 million.

Layer 4: Franchisor additional-insured (named as additional insured on franchisee’s GL policy) — adds per-occurrence coverage on top of franchisee.

Layer 5: Franchisor primary GL — Sky Zone Franchising LLC, Urban Air Franchise Holdings, UATP Management LLC, Altitude Franchise Holdings, Launch Franchise Holdings — $5 million to $25 million.

Layer 6: Franchisor excess — $10 million to $50 million.

Layer 7: Corporate parent policy — Sky Zone Inc. (formerly CircusTrix), Unleashed Brands LLC, ATP Alpha — $25 million to $100 million-plus.

Layer 8: Landlord commercial GL — for shopping-center, outlet-mall, or industrial-park premises — $5 million to $25 million.

Layer 9: Landlord umbrella — $10 million to $50 million.

Layer 10: Manufacturer product-liability — for component failures involving Ropes Courses Inc., UA Attractions LLC, the airbag manufacturer, the kart manufacturer — $10 million to $50 million.

Layer 11: Insurance broker E&O (where misrepresentation in the application is implicated) — $1 million to $10 million.

Layer 12: Food-service operator GL (separate claim where food-service injury stacks) — $1 million to $5 million.

For a chain park with the full corporate-tower architecture, the total accessible insurance across all layers can reach $50 million to $200 million-plus. The primary GL is the floor, not the ceiling.

The franchisor additional-insured doctrine — the access multiplier

Franchise agreements typically require the franchisee to maintain commercial GL at specified minimums (often $2 million to $5 million), to name the franchisor as an additional insured on the franchisee’s GL policy, and to indemnify the franchisor for claims arising from franchisee operations. The legal effect: when a plaintiff sues both the franchisee and the franchisor, the franchisee’s GL policy must defend AND indemnify both parties (including the franchisor); the franchisor’s OWN policy stacks on top; and both insurers may coordinate defense. The Damion Collins arbitration award demonstrates this directly — UATP Management LLC absorbed 40 percent of the $19.5 million gross award through its franchisor additional-insured exposure. When a defense adjuster says “the policy is $2 million,” the response is: tender to the franchisor’s additional-insured coverage immediately, then access franchisor’s own primary and excess policies stacking on top. We routinely access $10 million to $50 million-plus across layers, not $2 million.

The 8-layer residential backyard insurance map

Layer 1: Homeowners primary (HO-3 / HO-5) — $100,000 to $500,000, often trampoline-excluded.

Layer 2: Homeowners umbrella — $1 million to $5 million.

Layer 3: Landlord umbrella (rental residence) — $1 million to $10 million.

Layer 4: HOA master GL — $1 million to $25 million.

Layer 5: HOA D&O (Board Member Personal) — $1 million to $5 million.

Layer 6: Manufacturer product liability — $5 million to $50 million.

Layer 7: Retailer product liability — Walmart, Amazon, Target — varies but often substantial through self-insurance.

Layer 8: Aftermarket parts seller — small sellers often uninsured; limited.

The bad-faith leverage — Stowers in Texas

G.A. Stowers Furniture Co. v. American Indemnity Co. (Tex. 1929). Texas’s seminal bad-faith doctrine: an insurer that refuses a reasonable settlement offer within policy limits and exposes its insured to an excess judgment is liable to the insured for the excess. Application to Texas trampoline-park cases: when our firm makes a policy-limits demand that the carrier unreasonably rejects, the insured (operator, franchisor, or both) accumulates Stowers exposure. The plaintiff obtains an excess verdict at trial; the insured assigns the excess-verdict claim against the carrier to the plaintiff in exchange for a covenant not to execute; the plaintiff then collects the excess from the carrier. Insurance carriers HATE Stowers exposure. A properly structured policy-limits demand creates settlement pressure that the primary limits alone do not. The Stowers analog exists in most states (Crisci v. Security Insurance in California; Comunale v. Traders & General in California; various state-specific authorities).

The insurance-application-misrepresentation coverage lever

When parks misrepresent safety practices, attendant ratios, training programs, inspection protocols, or incident history on their commercial general liability or umbrella applications, the insurer may have a rescission or bad-faith defense against its own insured. Even if the carrier does not rescind, the misrepresentation puts coverage at risk — which moves settlement pressure onto the park directly. Our firm tenders every coverage layer and asks whether the carrier intends to defend under reservation of rights. Suddenly the park’s defense lawyer is fighting a two-front war.

Damages — the 17-category economic taxonomy

Economic damages are objectively calculable and uncapped in Texas. The seventeen categories: (1) emergency medical and EMS transport; (2) hospital inpatient (room and board, physician charges, surgical charges, ICU charges, pharmacy, ancillary lab and pathology and radiology); (3) hospital outpatient and follow-up; (4) rehabilitation (physical, occupational, speech-language, cognitive, aquatic, vocational); (5) pharmacy and durable medical equipment (wheelchairs, crutches, walker, cane, orthotics, braces, splints, hospital bed, hoyer lift, shower chair, prosthetics with replacement cycles); (6) future medical care (life-care plan); (7) attendant care ($50,000 to $400,000-plus annually for catastrophic SCI/TBI); (8) home modifications (wheelchair ramps, doorway widening, bathroom modifications, kitchen modifications, flooring transitions, stairlift or elevator — $50,000 to $300,000 one-time plus periodic updates); (9) vehicle modifications ($50,000 to $150,000 per cycle, every 8-12 years); (10) lost wages (past, ongoing, lost overtime, bonuses, benefits); (11) lost earning capacity (future — for pediatric cases, forensic-economist projection); (12) parental lost wages during child’s hospitalization, follow-up, therapy transport, and career-interruption damages; (13) educational costs (special education, IEP coordination, academic aides, assistive technology, private tutoring — often $500,000 to $3 million over a child’s educational lifetime); (14) property damage; (15) medical travel and lodging (out-of-town specialist travel, Ronald McDonald House lodging, IRS-rate mileage); (16) caregiver training (parent training in attendant care, CPR/First Aid certification, specialized medical training); (17) concussion-baseline-gap damages (the inability to establish pre-injury cognitive baseline because parks don’t do baseline testing, which compromises post-injury cognitive comparison).

Damages — the 10-category non-economic taxonomy

(1) Past physical pain. (2) Future physical pain. (3) Past mental anguish. (4) Future mental anguish. (5) Loss of enjoyment of life. (6) Disfigurement (scars, amputation, visible deformity — pediatric disfigurement carries heightened damages). (7) Impairment (permanent functional loss in range of motion, strength, endurance, cognition). (8) Loss of consortium (spouse). (9) Parental consortium and sibling impact (state-dependent recognition; where Texas recognizes, damages for loss of parental services and sibling developmental disruption). (10) Hedonic damages (loss of the pleasures of existence). Texas does NOT cap general-tort non-economic damages — the medical-malpractice cap does not apply to trampoline-park cases.

Hidden damages — the 17 categories most firms miss

(1) Life insurance premium increases following catastrophic injury. (2) Private mortgage insurance and credit implications from reduced earning capacity. (3) Parental career-impact damages (lifetime career-ceiling lowering, retirement savings reduction). (4) Sibling developmental damages (anxiety disorders, academic regression, caregiver-role expectations, reduced parental attention). (5) Social development damages (missed sleepaway camp, peer-group athletics, college sports participation, scholarship pathways). (6) Marriage and reproductive damages (loss of sexual function, fertility, reproductive capacity in catastrophic SCI or severe pelvic trauma). (7) Cognitive-earning cascade for pediatric TBI (even “mild” pediatric TBI reduces lifetime earnings in cohort studies). (8) Post-splenectomy OPSI lifetime risk damages (annual vaccination cadence, emergency antibiotics, lifetime medical vigilance, reduced life expectancy). (9) Concussion-baseline-gap damages. (10) Growth-plate delayed-manifestation damages (Salter-Harris injuries manifesting as limb-length discrepancy years post-injury). (11) Special education lifetime costs (eighteen-plus years of SLP, OT, IEP coordination, aides, assistive technology). (12) Day-in-the-life video cost ($15,000 to $50,000 — not damages but case-presentation expense the defendant pays). (13) Medical lien interest and compounding (lifetime financial burden from compounding hospital debt prior to settlement). (14) Tax-adjusted present-value discrepancy (most firms use nominal dollars; tax-adjusted, present-valued life-care plans produce substantially higher figures). (15) Lost scholarship and athletic-pathway damages (student-athletes lose Division I recruitment, professional pathway). (16) Post-injury insurance-rating impact (lifetime premium increases). (17) Caregiver burnout treatment (parents and family members providing long-term care develop their own medical and psychological conditions).

Texas punitive damages mechanics

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 41.008 caps exemplary damages at the greater of (a) two times economic damages plus non-economic damages up to $750,000 or (b) $200,000. § 41.008(c) provides a felony-grade unlock that is rare in recreational-injury cases. Worked example on a $5 million compensatory verdict ($2 million economic, $3 million non-economic): the cap calculates as 2 × $2 million + $750,000 = $4.75 million in punitive damages. § 41.003(d) requires a unanimous jury for punitive findings. § 41.009 permits the defendant to bifurcate the punitive proceeding with financial-condition evidence reserved for Phase 2. Constitutional ratios under BMW v. Gore and State Farm v. Campbell typically range 1:1 to 9:1 between punitive and compensatory damages.

Settlement structure for minor claimants and Special Needs Trusts

Texas requires court approval for settlement of a minor’s claim (via guardian ad litem, next friend, or friendly-suit procedure). Net proceeds typically go into a structured-settlement annuity (tax-free growth under IRC § 104(a)(2), scheduled payouts aligned with anticipated expenses, protection from financial mismanagement during minority and early adulthood) or a Special Needs Trust (for catastrophic cases, preserving Medicaid, SSI, Section 8 housing, and other means-tested benefits). Third-party SNTs are funded by settlement proceeds; first-party self-settled SNTs (under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(4)(A)) require specific trust structure plus Medicaid payback at the beneficiary’s death. Our firm coordinates with specialized estate-planning counsel — a step that, missed, can disqualify a child from government benefits worth hundreds of thousands over a lifetime.

Medical lien negotiation

Post-settlement lien reduction is a specialty discipline. The difference between gross and net recovery is often 20 to 40 percent. Lien types: hospital liens (Texas statutory, often negotiable down substantially); Medicare and Medicaid (federal, must be reported and satisfied, with specific Medicare Set-Aside rules for future Medicare beneficiaries); ERISA employer health-plan liens (often aggressive, subject to federal preemption, negotiable based on plan language); private health insurance subrogation (plan-specific, often negotiable); workers’ compensation (subrogation interest in third-party recovery); state Medicaid third-party liability (statutory). Our negotiation discipline includes itemizing bills to eliminate charges unrelated to injury, challenging UCR (usual, customary, reasonable) rates, invoking Ahlborn and Wos state-level authority for Medicaid reductions, arguing common-fund doctrine for ERISA plans, and reducing attorney-fee burden on the client. Attorney911 performs medical-lien negotiation in-house.

Evidence preservation — the 72-hour playbook

Every Texas trampoline-park case lives or dies in the first 7 to 30 days. Surveillance overwrites. Incident reports get “revised.” Waivers get purged from kiosk databases. Foam pits get refilled. Broken springs get replaced overnight. Attendants who saw what happened transfer or quit. Our spoliation letter goes out by certified mail within 24 hours of retention. Every time. No exceptions.

The destruction timeline

Surveillance DVR footage: typically 7 to 30 days, depending on camera count, storage capacity, and park policy. Kiosk waiver version-history database: variable, with some parks purging older versions on 72-hour or 30-day cycles. Attendant time-clock records: 90 days typical. Daily inspection logs: 30 to 90 days on-site, may be archived thereafter. Prior incident reports: retained but often “organized” post-event. EMS run sheets: obtainable but takes 30 to 45 days. 911 CAD records: typically 30-plus days to obtain. Broken equipment (springs, padding, foam, netting): replaced within hours to days. Foam pit (in foam-pit injury cases): refilled or rotated within days. Attendant on duty: may quit or transfer within weeks. Social media posts: platform-dependent, with Instagram and TikTok stories ephemeral at 24 hours.

The spoliation letter — the 38-item demand list

The litigation-hold demand we send to the park, the franchisor, and the insurance carrier within 24 hours of retention is not boilerplate. It identifies every specific document type, system, and piece of evidence by name. The full letter appears as a section of this guide further down (Section 23). The categories: surveillance evidence (all camera angles for 72 hours pre-incident through 48 hours post-incident; DVR/NVR system itself with no overwrites or decommissioning; video access logs; metadata including timestamps, camera IDs, resolution, retention-policy settings); incident documentation (original incident report and all subsequent versions with full metadata; internal communications including email, Slack, Teams, text; EMS call logs and 911 CAD records; first-aid kit usage records; any audio or video recordings made by staff during or after the incident); attendant records (shift schedule, time-clock records, individual training files for initial and refresher training, attendant-court-assignment records, contact information for current and former attendants); operational records (daily pre-opening inspection logs and 30 days preceding; monthly, quarterly, and annual deep-maintenance logs for 12 months preceding; foam-pit maintenance, rotation, and replacement logs; equipment maintenance records; daily operating-conditions records); policies and procedures (operations manual for 24 months preceding; attendant training curriculum and materials; ASTM F2970 compliance documentation; chain operational standards and location-specific variants); waiver system (kiosk software system with no modifications; waiver versions used during 24 months preceding; injured jumper’s specific transaction record with IP address, timestamp, device ID, version signed; access logs for the waiver database); franchise and corporate (franchise agreement; all franchisor audits and inspections of the subject location for 36 months preceding; chain-wide incident database access logs; communications between operator, franchisee, and franchisor regarding the location or incident); equipment preservation (any specific equipment implicated — spring, padding, net, bed, foam-block samples — DO NOT replace, repair, alter, or discard; daily photographs of the subject court, pit, or feature; pre-incident equipment inspection and replacement history); insurance documents (all applicable policies — primary GL, umbrella, excess, franchisor additional-insured, manufacturer product-liability; insurance-broker communications regarding underwriting and application; prior claims history for the subject location).

Surveillance forensics — when “the video is unavailable”

When the park claims surveillance is unavailable, our response is uniform. Subpoena the DVR or NVR hardware. Demand the retention-policy documentation in writing. Demand access logs showing who logged in to view or export footage. Demand a sworn affidavit from the IT administrator. File a spoliation motion when footage was within the retention window but destroyed after our spoliation letter arrived. Request adverse-inference instruction. The Mathew Knight Georgia $3.5 million verdict is the precedent: Knight’s defense produced surveillance video that “glitched” on FOUR cameras simultaneously at the precise moment of staff instruction. The jury treated the multi-camera glitch as intentional spoliation and adverse-inference evidence. The four-camera-simultaneous-failure pattern is statistical impossibility absent intentional act — and the courtroom outcome reflected that.

Incident-report metadata forensics

Multiple versions of any park’s incident report typically exist. The original handwritten or first-draft report filled at scene by the attendant or manager. The initial computer-entered version in the park’s incident-management system. Revised versions, each with metadata (editor ID, timestamp, content changed). The supervisor-signed version. The risk-management-reviewed version (often with annotations). The insurance-notice version (sent to the GL carrier). The chain-database version (entered into the franchisor’s central incident database). Document creation timestamp, every edit timestamp and editor ID, edit content (added, removed, or changed), and system access logs (who viewed, printed, or exported) are discoverable. The smoking-gun pattern: the initial report typically contains more accurate, less-lawyered language (“attendant was on his phone when the incident occurred”). Revisions sanitize this (“incident occurred during normal operations”). The delta between versions is admission.

Waiver-system forensics

For waiver evidence, demand all versions of the waiver used during 24 months preceding; the specific version applicable to the injured jumper on the date of injury; the full transaction record with IP address, timestamp, device ID, kiosk ID, and user-input fields; the system audit log (who modified the waiver text, when, why); the code repository or vendor information for the waiver software; and change-management tickets in the park’s IT system regarding waiver modifications. The version-history kill: if the park claims the injured jumper signed Version 7 but system logs show Version 7 wasn’t deployed until after the injury date, the waiver defense collapses. The inadequate-conspicuousness documentation: screen captures and recordings of the actual kiosk flow; font sizes, color contrast, screen-time measurements; comparison against state’s conspicuousness standards (Texas Dresser fair notice, California Tunkl factors, NY GOL § 5-326).

The Wayback Machine waiver-version archaeology workflow

Before any spoliation letter goes out, our firm captures the operator’s current kiosk waiver text, website terms, and mobile-app waiver flow into the Internet Archive. The captured snapshot URL becomes proof-of-notice in the spoliation letter. If the park later “updates” the waiver to retrofit conspicuousness or scope, the Wayback Machine snapshot is admission-grade evidence of the waiver as it actually existed at the time of injury. Federal Rule of Evidence 902(14) self-authentication of certified electronic records — combined with an Internet Archive affidavit — makes the captures admissible without foundation witnesses. United States v. Bansal, 663 F.3d 634 (3d Cir. 2011); St. Luke’s Cataract & Laser Inst. v. Sanderson, 2006 WL 1320242 (M.D. Fla. 2006).

Forensic tools — the digital-evidence depth

The forensic tools our firm references when discussing specific evidence categories include surveillance DVR/NVR forensic imaging via write-blocked acquisition (FTK Imager, EnCase, Magnet AXIOM — produces hash-verified copies preserving the original storage media); kiosk and iPad waiver mobile-device forensic extraction (Cellebrite UFED, Magnet AXIOM Cyber, Oxygen Forensic Detective — recovers waiver version history, signature timestamps, kiosk OS metadata); cloud-stored incident report forensic acquisition (Magnet AXIOM Cloud, Cellebrite Cloud Analyzer — recovers Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SharePoint version histories with metadata edit-trails); park computer system access logs (Windows Event Log forensics, DVR access logs, network share access trails); mobile device forensics for witnesses and attendants (Cellebrite UFED, Oxygen Forensic Detective for SMS, social media DMs, timestamped photos); Wayback Machine and archive.today captures with FRE 902(14) hash certificate; social media forensic capture (X1 Social Discovery, Hanzo, Pagefreezer, Smarsh — produces FRE 902(14)-compliant social media evidence preservation); email header and metadata forensics (Microsoft Outlook PST forensic analysis, Gmail Vault export, header analysis for sender, recipient, timestamp, IP); and audio, voicemail, and phone-call forensics (Audacity for waveform analysis, Pacelot for call-record forensics, 911 CAD and PSAP audio FOIA).

Ex-employee outreach — the 7-channel former-insider witness network

Trampoline-park attendants and supervisors have high turnover — average tenure 3 to 9 months at chain locations. By the time discovery opens 60 to 90 days post-injury, many of the people who witnessed the incident have left the company. They are no longer subject to the park’s HR control. They are not worried about losing the job they have already left. They are often willing to talk. Our seven-channel ex-employee outreach workflow includes: LinkedIn alumni search of the company page (Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude); Indeed and Glassdoor reviews (former employees frequently describe operational conditions including short-staffing, attendant-ratio violations, training gaps, supervisor pressure, and post-incident conduct); local Facebook groups, Reddit threads, and parent groups; state labor-department wage-hour-OSHA records (state L&I databases such as Washington and California Cal/OSHA, Texas Workforce Commission, federal DOL public records sometimes name complainant employees); unemployment-claim records (in some states, ex-employee names appear in unemployment-claim public dockets, particularly for ex-attendants who left immediately after a major incident); rival-park employment transitions (trampoline-industry workers migrate between chains within a metro — an ex-Sky Zone attendant may now work at the Urban Air across town); and direct deposition via subpoena (no consent required — once identified, ex-employees can be subpoenaed for deposition; they no longer have an employer-counsel privilege buffer). Ethical discipline: we never contact a CURRENT park employee without going through park counsel (Rule 4.2 — communication with represented parties); ex-employees are not represented by park counsel, so direct contact is permissible.

Open-records requests — the FOIA / Texas PIA workflow

Our paralegal team files Texas Public Information Act (Texas Government Code Chapter 552) requests with the Texas Department of Insurance for Class B inflatable inspection records (compliance sticker history, inspector certification, any closure orders under § 2151.151), with city and county fire marshal and building departments for certificate of occupancy and fire-code-inspection records, and with state amusement-ride regulators in any other state where the chain operates. Federal OSHA establishment search (osha.gov/ords/imis/establishment.html) for Sky Zone Inc. and CircusTrix legacy entries; UATP Management LLC, UATP Holdings LLC, UA Attractions LLC, Urban Air-related entities; DEFY, Altitude, Rockin’ Jump, Unleashed Brands. Federal U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division FOIA for child-labor investigations involving the chain. State labor and industries records (the Sky Zone Tukwila $68,000 January 2025 citation and Sky Zone Vancouver $22,000-plus February 2024 citation are pulled from Washington L&I public records). CPSC SaferProducts.gov complaint-narrative pulls for the operator’s product code plus each manufacturer name (Jumpking, Skywalker, Springfree, JumpSport, Bouncepro, ACON, Vuly, Zupapa, HEDSTROM, Bollinger, Amazon Basics) — admissible as notice evidence against manufacturers. CPSC NEISS custom queries on product codes 1233 (consumer trampolines) and 3246 (commercial trampoline parks), separated by year (2020-2024), age group, and body region. FTC Franchise Rule (16 C.F.R. § 436) Item 3 disclosure pulls for Sky Zone Franchising LLC, Urban Air Franchise Holdings, Altitude Franchise Holdings, UATP Management LLC, Launch Franchise Holdings — every franchisor must disclose 5-year litigation history.

Texas Rule 202 pre-suit petition

Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 202 allows a petition to take a deposition before suit is filed for the purpose of investigating a potential claim. Our firm uses Rule 202 to capture: the kiosk waiver screen recording (the click-through formation event); the on-duty manager’s account of the incident; the surveillance retention policy; the maintenance and inspection logs. Especially powerful when the park is stonewalling or refusing to produce informally. Rule 202 forces evidence preservation under court order before the SOL clock or the DVR-overwrite clock runs.

The expert team we deploy on every catastrophic case

Generic legal content says “we work with experts.” Expert-grade trampoline-park content names the discipline, identifies the question that expert answers, and specifies the evidentiary purpose. Our firm references at least three of these expert categories in every catastrophic Texas trampoline-park case.

Biomechanical engineer. Establishes energy transfer in double-bounce mechanics, fall mechanics, force-of-impact calculations, airbag and foam-pit dynamics, and ASTM F2970 compliance against measurable physics. Deployed in any mechanical-failure or energy-transfer case.

Pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Establishes Salter-Harris classification, growth-plate prognosis, lifetime monitoring needs, corrective-osteotomy timing, and operative versus non-operative treatment alternatives. Deployed in every pediatric fracture, particularly femur, tibia, distal tibia, and ankle.

Pediatric neurologist or neuropsychologist. Establishes pediatric TBI sequelae, cognitive-development impairment, second-impact-syndrome risk, school-accommodation needs, and lifetime academic and vocational impact. Deployed in any pediatric concussion or TBI case.

Spine surgeon (pediatric or adult). Establishes spinal-cord-injury prognosis, cervical-fusion outcomes, SCIWORA recognition, vertebral artery dissection workup, atlanto-axial subluxation, and rehabilitation outcomes. Deployed in any cervical injury or any “panic attack” misdiagnosis pattern (Elle Yona archetype).

ASTM compliance and trampoline-industry safety expert. Establishes F2970 attendant-ratio compliance, foam-pit depth specifications, age-separation enforcement, and IATP certification gaps. Often a former park operator or safety professional with industry-insider knowledge. Deployed in every commercial-park case.

Life-care planner (Certified Life Care Planner — CLCP). Forecasts lifetime medical costs, attendant-care needs, durable medical equipment, and vocational impact. Deployed in every catastrophic injury (TBI, SCI, amputation, severe pediatric).

Forensic economist. Calculates lost earning capacity, present-value calculation, household-services value, parental wage loss for caregiving, and tax-adjusted projections. Deployed in every case with a future-damages component.

Pediatric psychiatrist or child psychologist. Establishes PTSD, school avoidance, family-system trauma impact, sleep disturbance, and adolescent-onset depression. Deployed in any case where pediatric mental-health impact is at issue.

Infectious disease and epidemiology expert. Establishes the chain of causation in MRSA, Group A strep, and necrotizing fasciitis cases, with reference to CDC athletic-facility transmission patterns and sanitation-protocol failures. Deployed in Section E.16 infection-vertical cases.

Toxicology and rhabdomyolysis expert. Establishes myoglobinuria pathophysiology, CK-level interpretation, dehydration-plus-extended-exertion-plus-heat causation chain. Deployed in extended-jumping rhabdo cases — and bridges directly to our active University of Houston rhabdo litigation.

Forensic engineer (product liability). Establishes manufacturing defect, design defect, materials-failure analysis, FMEA review, and owner-manual adequacy. Deployed in backyard and manufacturer-defect cases.

Forensic document examiner and digital forensics specialist. Establishes incident-report metadata, kiosk-waiver version archaeology, and surveillance DVR forensic extraction. Deployed in any case with incident-report-revision suspicion or surveillance-dispute facts.

Expert-retention timing: Days 1-2 (post-retention) — biomechanical engineer plus ASTM compliance expert (the case-theory experts). Days 3-7 — treating-physician expert reports plus medical chronology (often using treating providers initially). Days 8-30 — life-care planner plus forensic economist (after medical stabilization). Day 30-plus — specialty experts as fact patterns emerge (digital forensics if spoliation surfaces; ID expert if infection surfaces; pediatric neuropsychologist if cognitive sequelae surface).

The case-build — how a trampoline park case actually gets won

Texas trampoline-park cases are not won by sending a demand letter and waiting. They are won by a disciplined ten-step case-build that puts pressure on every defendant and every insurer simultaneously, on a timeline measured in hours and days rather than months.

Step 1 — 24-hour spoliation letter. Certified mail plus email plus fax to the park, the franchisor, and the insurer demanding preservation of surveillance, incident reports, attendant logs, training records, jumper records, and equipment. Triple-channel delivery creates a defensible record of notice.

Step 2 — 48-hour scene investigation. Biomechanical engineer on-site or via video review. Photographer for current-conditions documentation. Witness canvass for parents and jumpers present on the date of injury.

Step 3 — Medical records secure and chronology review. ER-through-follow-up records ordered. Medical chronology specialist builds a bookmarked, timeline-organized, annotated chronology that becomes the settlement-demand foundation, deposition-preparation tool, expert-witness reference, and trial exhibit.

Step 4 — Corporate structure discovery. Texas Secretary of State entity searches; FTC Franchise Disclosure Document Item 3 pulls for the franchisor; OSHA establishment searches for the chain; chain-wide incident-history requests.

Step 5 — Insurance discovery. Primary GL, umbrella, excess, franchisor additional-insured, manufacturer product-liability, food-service-operator GL, landlord GL — every applicable policy demanded in initial discovery.

Step 6 — ASTM F2970 compliance audit. Cross-reference the park’s operations manual, training records, and inspection logs against the applicable F2970 edition (F2970-22 for incidents post-2022; earlier editions for older incidents). Identify every documented violation.

Step 7 — Waiver analysis. Run the waiver through the five-vector attack: gross-negligence carve-out, conspicuousness, parental indemnity void for minors, unconscionability, and scope-versus-inherent-risks. For Texas cases, layer the additional vectors: Delfingen bilingual formation, § 153.073 signer authority, Cerna delegation-clause specific challenge, Coppi litigation-conduct waiver, and Beaumont v. Geter direct-benefits-estoppel countermove.

Step 8 — Witness depositions. Attendant on duty, shift supervisor on duty, operations manager, corporate risk officer, the franchisor’s operations and training liaison, the HR manager. Depositions of individual employees yield closing-argument-grade narrative.

Step 9 — Expert retention. The 12-category expert deployment described in Section 16, deployed on the cadence described.

Step 10 — Trial readiness from Day 1. File complaint early. Take every deposition. Prepare for trial from the first day of representation, even when settlement is the likely outcome. Preparation pressure drives settlement value.

Insurance and defense tactics — every move the other side will try

Insurance-industry tactics have names. When our firm names them in the demand letter, in the deposition, and at trial, the reader, the deponent, and the jury recognize the pattern. The named tactics:

The Friendly Adjuster Call. The park’s insurance adjuster calls within 48 hours of the incident, sounding kind and concerned, asking how the child is doing, and angling for a recorded statement. Every word recorded is used against the family. The script is uniform across the industry. The right response: “I am represented by Attorney911. Don’t contact me again. Contact my attorney.” Hang up.

The Quick Med-Pay Settlement. The park’s insurer offers $1,500 to $5,000 in “medical payments” requiring signing of a release. The release ends the case. Do not deposit the check. Do not sign anything.

The Recorded Statement Trap. The adjuster asks for a recorded statement walking through what happened. Every “I’m not sure” becomes “uncertain”; every “maybe” becomes “no”; every “I think” becomes “speculation.” Refuse.

The IME Ambush. “Independent” medical examination by a doctor who earns 80-plus percent of income from defense work. Their job is to write a minimization report. We retain our own pediatric orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, neurologist, or neuropsychologist whose deposition testimony and trial presence neutralize the IME.

The Social Media Surveillance. The insurer monitors Instagram, Facebook, TikTok for anything usable. Anything posted after the injury will be used in deposition. Delete nothing (deletion is spoliation), post nothing.

The Surveillance “Unavailable” Defense. “The camera angle didn’t capture it” or “footage was corrupted” or “retention expired.” Our response is uniform: subpoena the DVR hardware; demand retention-policy documentation, access logs, and a sworn affidavit from the IT administrator. The Mathew Knight Georgia $3.5 million verdict turned on this exact pattern.

The Incident Report Revision. The original report says “attendant on phone.” The “corrected” version says “incident occurred during normal operations.” Every revision has metadata. We pull it.

The Waiver Wave. “You signed a waiver — case closed.” Our opening line: let’s read it. Is it conspicuous under Dresser? Does it cover gross negligence (it can’t under Moriel)? Was it signed on behalf of a minor (it can’t bar the child’s claim under Munoz)?

The Delay to Statute. Insurer slow-walks the claim hoping the SOL runs. We file before the statute runs. We don’t rely on tolling. We don’t rely on adjuster good faith. We file.

The Policy Limit Shell Game. “The policy is only $1 million.” Primary GL is the floor, not the ceiling. Umbrella, excess, franchisor additional-insured, franchisor primary, franchisor excess, parent policy, landlord GL, manufacturer product-liability — every layer gets discovered.

The Assumption-of-Risk Reflex. Defense invokes assumption of risk for “inherent trampoline dangers.” Texas abolished assumption of risk as a separate defense under Farley v. M.M. Cattle Co. Children under 7 are conclusively presumed incapable of negligence under Texas pediatric comparative-negligence doctrine.

The Contributory Jumper Blame. Defense designates another jumper (often another child) as a responsible third party under § 33.004 to dilute its own fault percentage under § 33.013. We file § 33.004(l) no-evidence motions supported by biomechanics-expert affidavits to knock each RTP designation back. Texas pediatric comparative-negligence doctrine forecloses blaming children under 7 entirely.

The Surveillance “Glitch” Spoliation. Defense produces video that fails or glitches at the moment of injury. The Mathew Knight Georgia $3.5 million precedent. Adverse-inference instruction. Spoliation sanctions.

The “Don’t Call 911” Protocol. Documented public reviews at Urban Air Southlake Texas, Urban Air Miami Florida, Urban Air Tulsa Oklahoma, Aerosports Scarborough, and others alleging staff are instructed not to call EMS for serious patron injuries. Pre-meditated evidence-destruction protocol. Gross-negligence-grade evidence.

The Responsible Third Party Designation Trap. Texas defendants designate at least 60 days before trial; we counter with no-evidence motions plus biomechanics expert affidavits.

The Class B Inflatable Statutory Carve-In. Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 trampoline-deck exclusion at § 2151.002(1)(C)(iv) vs. Class B inflatable inclusion (bungee trampolines, Sky Riders, indoor coasters, inflatable obstacles). Plead the inflatable separately. Pull TDI inspection records.

The Delegation Clause Specific Attack. Post-Cerna Texas and post-Karlin Missouri — challenge the delegation clause itself specifically as separately unconscionable.

The Litigation-Conduct Waiver of Arbitration. Coppi v. Family Adventures (NJ 2025); Morgan v. Sundance (U.S. 2022). When the defense participates substantially in litigation before moving to compel, the right to arbitration is waived.

The Direct-Benefits Estoppel for Minors. Texas Beaumont v. Geter (Houston 14th Dist. 2024). Counter by naming non-signatory defendants on whom no estoppel argument runs.

The Park’s Public-Confession Move. Matthew Lu Altitude Gastonia “human error” admission plus permanent climbing-wall removal. Both are admission-grade evidence.

The Insurance Application Misrepresentation Coverage Lever. Misrepresented safety practices on the CGL or umbrella application put coverage at risk; tender to the carrier; carrier reservation of rights; defense lawyer fights two-front war.

The Signer-Authority Defeat (TX Family Code § 153.073). Non-guardian signature destroys waiver footing as to the child.

The Bilingual-Formation Delfingen Defeat. English-only kiosk waiver to Spanish-primary patron — formation defect.

The Delayed-Notice EMS Subterfuge. Park delays calling 911 buying time so video overwrites and witnesses scatter. Evidence destruction by another name.

The fifty-state quick-reference table

Every state has its own statute of limitations, comparative-fault rule, waiver-enforceability doctrine, parental-indemnity rule, and ASTM F2970 incorporation status. The table below summarizes the contemporary doctrine. Citations to specific cases and statutes are in Section 7 (Texas detailed) and Section 8 (jurisdictional split).

Five states retain pure contributory negligence (Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, D.C.) — any plaintiff fault bars recovery; cases require careful pleading of gross negligence and elimination of comparative-fault arguments. Three states (Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee) have one-year SOLs requiring extreme urgency. Three states (Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, plus Minnesota’s 6-year for some torts) have unusually long SOLs. Ten states adopt ASTM F2970 by reference (Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin) — making F2970 violations regulatory non-compliance and arguably negligence per se.

Why Attorney911

You can hire any personal-injury firm in Texas after a trampoline-park injury. Most generalist Texas PI firms read ASTM F2970 for the first time when a trampoline case comes through the door. Most do not have a former insurance-defense attorney on staff who used to write the waiver language Texas chains rely on today. Most are not currently litigating a $10 million catastrophic-injury case against an institutional defendant involving the same medical pathology that drives extended-jumping rhabdomyolysis cases at trampoline parks. Most have not litigated against BP, Walmart, Amazon, FedEx, UPS, and Coca-Cola. Most do not have offices in three Texas metros. Most do not handle Spanish-language clients directly without interpreters. Most do not have the operational discipline to send a 38-item spoliation letter within 24 hours of retention, every time, no exceptions.

Ralph Manginello founded the firm in 1998. His credentials: managing partner of The Manginello Law Firm PLLC; State Bar of Texas (Bar #24007597, Active, admitted November 6, 1998); New York State Bar (Active, allowing multi-jurisdictional work); U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas (admitted); Federal Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Texas (admitted); J.D., South Texas College of Law Houston (1998); B.A. Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin. Twenty-five-plus years of catastrophic personal-injury and criminal-defense litigation. Practice areas directly relevant to trampoline-park work: catastrophic injury and death (TBI, SCI, amputation, wrongful death — the exact categories trampoline parks and defective residential trampolines produce); product liability (design defect, manufacturing defect, failure to warn — directly applicable to manufacturer cases); premises liability (property-owner and operator duty — directly applicable to commercial parks); pediatric injury representation; complex multi-defendant litigation (the active 13-plus-defendant University of Houston case demonstrates the firm’s capacity for institutional-defendant accountability). Ralph’s prior corporate-defendant experience includes the BP Texas City Refinery Explosion (2005, 15 deaths, 170-plus injuries, $2.1 billion in industry-wide settlements), Walmart, Amazon, Coca-Cola, FedEx, UPS, and major oil and gas operators.

Lupe Peña is the firm’s competitive edge in trampoline-injury litigation. She previously worked on the defense side, representing insurance carriers and recreational businesses against injury claims. She wrote and defended the same waiver clauses Texas trampoline parks, gymnastics facilities, and recreational businesses rely on today. She knows which conspicuousness arguments hold and which get thrown out. She knows which parental-indemnity defenses insurers deploy first and which pediatric-claim precedents break them. She knows the friendly-adjuster playbook from the inside because she trained adjusters. She knows the IME-doctor rotation. She recognizes manufactured documentation — the “revised” incident report, the “corrected” waiver version, the surveillance that’s suddenly “unavailable.” She is a native Spanish speaker and represents Hispanic clients directly without interpreters. Hablamos Español.

The firm’s three Texas offices: Houston main at 1177 West Loop South, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77027; Houston secondary at 1635 Dunlavy Street, Houston, TX 77006; Austin at 316 West 12th Street, Suite 311, Austin, TX 78701; Beaumont by appointment for Jefferson County and Golden Triangle matters. Toll-free: 1-888-288-9911 / 1-888-ATTY-911. Direct: (713) 528-9070. Email: ralph@atty911.com or lupe@atty911.com.

Documented case-result categories from the firm’s catastrophic-injury work (in motor-vehicle, refinery, and product-liability matters — the architectural foundation for our trampoline practice): traumatic brain injury settlements $1.5M-$9.8M; spinal cord injury and paralysis $2M-$15M (national industry data); amputation $1.9M-$8.6M; wrongful death $1.9M-$9.5M; severe pediatric fracture cases $500K-$2M; permanent pediatric cervical injury $5M-$25M+ (national industry data for life-care planning).

The firm’s contingency structure: standard 33.33% pre-trial, 40% if trial. Zero upfront costs. The firm advances every expense — biomechanical engineer, pediatric orthopedic consultant, pediatric neurologist, pediatric neuropsychologist, ASTM compliance expert, life-care planner, forensic economist, infectious-disease physician, epidemiologist, materials scientist, educational consultant, forensic document examiner, digital forensics specialist, court reporter, deposition transcripts, filing fees, records retrieval. Reimbursement comes from the recovery at the end. If there is no recovery, the family owes nothing.

The firm’s 4.9-star Google reviews from 251-plus named clients include Chad Harris (“You are NOT just some client. You are FAMILY to them.”), Donald Wilcox (“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.”), Glenda Walker (“They fought for me to get every dime I deserved.”), Ernest Cano (“Mr. Manginello and his firm are first class. Will fight tooth and nail for you.”), Kiimarii Yup (“I lost everything… 1 year later I have gained so much in return plus a brand new truck.”), and Angel Walle (“They solved in a couple of months what others did nothing about in two years.”).

The firm’s transferability bridge to trampoline-park practice is honest and direct. Our prior catastrophic-injury work was in motor vehicle, refinery, criminal defense, and institutional accountability. We have not yet recovered $11.485 million for a trampoline-injury client because Cosmic Jump is not our case (it is the industry anchor, used as context). We HAVE recovered multi-million-dollar settlements in TBI, SCI, amputation, and wrongful death — the same medical and legal architecture trampoline-park catastrophic injuries require. The biomechanical engineer who reconstructs the moment of injury, the pediatric orthopedic surgeon who projects the growth-plate prognosis, the life-care planner who calculates the next forty years of medical costs, the forensic economist who quantifies lost earning capacity — these are our experts. We are bringing them to Texas trampoline-injury cases because the medicine follows the medicine, not the mechanism.

Frequently asked questions

Información en español: Sus derechos cuando un parque de trampolines lastimó a su hijo en Texas

Era el cumpleaños de su hijo. Le prometieron una tarde divertida en el parque de trampolines — el mismo parque que escuchó anunciado en español por la radio, el mismo lugar donde la sobrina de la vecina celebró su quinceañera, el mismo parque cuyos cupones aparecen en los volantes de Fiesta y H-E-B. Llegó al lobby con su esposo, sus tres hijos y su madre. La empleada en la entrada — una jovencita que no aparenta más de 16 años — le sonrió y le entregó una tableta con un formulario en inglés. Usted firmó porque eso es lo que uno hace cuando un niño quiere divertirse: uno firma. La empleada nunca le explicó nada en español. Nunca le dijo que estaba renunciando a sus derechos legales. Nunca le dijo que los pads de espuma alrededor de los resortes están casi gastados después de tres años sin reemplazar. Nunca le dijo que la red del foam pit no se ha rotado en 11 meses. Nunca le dijo que el supervisor de la corte de dunk empezó a trabajar hace dos semanas y nunca completó el “training” oficial de Sky Zone, Urban Air, Altitude o Launch.

Su hijo subió. Saltó. Cayó mal sobre el codo derecho. El crujido se escuchó en todo el parque. Y cuando usted regresó al lobby con su hijo gritando — la cara blanca, el brazo en una posición que ningún brazo humano debe tener — la empleada que minutos antes le sonrió en un español apenas pasable de repente “no entendía” lo que usted le pedía. El gerente “estaba en una reunión”. La línea telefónica del 911 nunca sonó. Le dijeron que el seguro del parque “se pondrá en contacto”. Le dieron una bolsa de hielo. Le pidieron que firmara otro formulario — en inglés — antes de “ayudar”. Le dijeron, sin decirlo claramente, que se fuera.

Eso no es un accidente. Eso es un patrón. Y ese patrón es ilegal en Texas.

Lo primero que necesita saber: Su estatus migratorio no afecta sus derechos legales

Repetimos: su estatus migratorio no afecta sus derechos legales en Texas. No importa si usted o su hijo están indocumentados, si están en proceso de DACA, si tienen una visa vencida, si entraron con visa de turista hace años, si están solicitando asilo, si tienen TPS, si son ciudadanos americanos, si son residentes permanentes con Green Card, si tienen Green Card en trámite, o cualquier otra categoría migratoria. Las cortes civiles de Texas — donde se demanda al parque de trampolines — no preguntan por estatus migratorio. La ley federal y la ley de Texas prohíben que un demandado civil use su estatus migratorio en contra suya en un juicio de lesión personal. Existe un caso fundamental de la Corte Suprema de Texas — TXI Transportation v. Hughes, 306 S.W.3d 230 (Tex. 2010) — que aplica esta regla. La defensa no puede preguntarle a usted, a su hijo, ni a sus testigos sobre estatus migratorio para tratar de avergonzarlos o disuadirlos de seguir adelante.

Si un abogado le dice “no podemos ayudarlo por su estatus”, ese abogado está equivocado o no quiere trabajar duro. Si una empleada del parque le dice “vamos a llamar a inmigración”, esa empleada está cometiendo un delito federal de coerción de testigos (18 U.S.C. § 1512). Si un ajustador de seguros le dice “lo vamos a deportar si no firma este finiquito”, ese ajustador está violando la ley federal y las reglas profesionales de ajustadores de seguros. Documente cualquiera de estas amenazas — anote la fecha, la hora, el nombre y el número de teléfono — y dénos esa información. Estas amenazas son evidencia poderosa de mala fe que puede triplicar el valor de su caso bajo la doctrina de Stowers en Texas.

EMTALA: Toda sala de emergencia en Texas tiene que atender a su hijo, sin importar nada

EMTALA significa “Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act” — es una ley federal de 1986 (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd) que exige que toda sala de emergencia en los Estados Unidos que reciba dinero de Medicare o Medicaid (lo que es prácticamente todas) tiene que examinar y estabilizar a cualquier paciente que llegue con una emergencia médica. Sin importar:

• Estatus migratorio
• Capacidad de pagar
• Si tiene seguro o no
• Si tiene un ID de Texas o no
• Si habla inglés o no
• Si es ciudadano americano o no
• Si tiene la dirección de la casa o no

Si su hijo se lastimó en un parque de trampolines y necesita atención médica de emergencia — fractura visible, golpe en la cabeza con vómito o pérdida de conocimiento, dificultad para respirar, dolor severo en el cuello o espalda, sangrado que no para, signos de shock — llame al 911 inmediatamente y diríjase al hospital más cercano. La sala de emergencia tiene que atenderlo bajo EMTALA. Los grandes centros de trauma pediátrico en Texas son: Texas Children’s Hospital y Memorial Hermann Children’s en Houston, Children’s Health Dallas y Cook Children’s en Fort Worth, Dell Children’s en Austin, University Hospital y Methodist Children’s en San Antonio, El Paso Children’s, Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, y Driscoll Children’s en Corpus Christi. En el Valle del Río Grande, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance en Edinburg y Valley Baptist Medical en Harlingen y Brownsville son los hospitales más equipados para emergencias pediátricas. En Beaumont, CHRISTUS Southeast Texas–St. Elizabeth Hospital es el centro de trauma de la región.

Si la sala de emergencia se niega a atenderlo, le pide papeles antes de examinar al niño, lo demora preguntándole sobre estatus migratorio, o lo refiere a otra parte sin estabilizarlo primero — eso es una violación de EMTALA y usted tiene una causa de acción adicional contra el hospital. Documéntelo todo: nombres, horas, qué le dijeron exactamente. Esa documentación tiene un valor legal enorme.

El pago a su familia: Cómo funciona si usted no tiene Social Security Number

Una pregunta común: “Si ganamos el caso, ¿cómo me pagan a mí o a mi hijo si no tenemos Social Security Number?” La respuesta es directa: con un ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number). El ITIN es un número de identificación fiscal que el IRS emite a personas que tienen obligaciones fiscales en los Estados Unidos pero no son elegibles para un SSN. Las compañías de seguros pagan finiquitos a personas con ITIN todos los días. Las cortes de Texas también pagan finiquitos estructurados (structured settlements) y trust funds para menores a beneficiarios con ITIN. Si usted no tiene ITIN, nosotros le ayudamos a tramitarlo con el IRS — el formulario W-7 — sin costo adicional para usted, como parte de nuestro servicio.

Cuando el caso se trata de un menor de edad — su hijo de 8 años, su hija de 12 años — la corte de Texas obligatoriamente exige una “minor’s settlement hearing” donde el juez aprueba el finiquito y supervisa cómo se va a manejar el dinero hasta que el menor cumpla 18 años. El dinero típicamente se pone en uno de tres vehículos:

• Court Registry: La corte mantiene el dinero hasta que el menor cumple 18, momento en que se libera con interés acumulado.
• Structured Settlement: Una compañía de seguros emite pagos periódicos (mensual, anual, o en momentos específicos como graduación de high school, ingreso a college, cumplimiento de 25 años) — esto protege contra mal manejo del dinero y garantiza ingresos a largo plazo.
• Special Needs Trust (SNT): Si el menor sufrió lesiones permanentes (lesión cerebral traumática, paraplejía, parálisis, etc.), se establece un fideicomiso especial supervisado por la corte que protege la elegibilidad del menor para Medicaid y otros beneficios públicos sin agotar el dinero del juicio.

Todos estos vehículos son compatibles con beneficiarios que tienen ITIN. Su estatus migratorio no impide ninguno de ellos.

El waiver firmado en inglés: Por qué probablemente no es válido contra usted (Delfingen y la Family Code § 153.073)

Casi todos los parques de trampolines en Texas hacen firmar a los padres un “waiver” o “release of liability” antes de dejar que los niños jueguen. Casi todos esos waivers están escritos solamente en inglés. Casi todos esos waivers son presentados en una tableta electrónica donde la empleada simplemente le pide que firme — sin explicación, sin traducción, sin oportunidad de hacer preguntas, sin oportunidad de leer el documento entero (que típicamente tiene entre 1,200 y 2,800 palabras de texto legal denso).

Existe un caso clave de la corte de apelaciones de El Paso — Delfingen US-Texas, L.P. v. Valenzuela, 407 S.W.3d 791 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2013, no pet.) — que es decisivo. Delfingen establece que cuando una empresa hispanohablante hace negocios con clientes hispanohablantes, anuncia en español, vende en español, recoge dinero en español — pero presenta documentos legales (waivers, contratos, formularios) solamente en inglés — eso constituye fraude por inducción (fraudulent inducement) y puede invalidar el contrato entero. La empresa aprovechó la confianza del consumidor hispanohablante mientras simultáneamente le escondió los términos legales detrás de la barrera del idioma. Eso no es un contrato libre y voluntario; eso es un engaño.

Los parques de trampolines hacen exactamente esto. Anuncian en KLOL, en La Raza, en Univision Houston, en Telemundo Dallas, en Mega 95.5 San Antonio. Tienen empleados hispanohablantes en el lobby. Aceptan tarjetas de crédito mexicanas. Pero el waiver — el documento que dicen que renuncia a todos sus derechos cuando su hijo se lastima — está solamente en inglés. Delfingen dice que ese waiver es vulnerable a ataque y nuestro equipo lo ataca rutinariamente. La decisión de la Corte de Apelaciones de Texas de 2025 en Trevino reforzó esta doctrina específicamente en el contexto de waivers presentados a padres hispanohablantes en establecimientos de recreación.

Adicionalmente, la sección 153.073 del Texas Family Code (Código de Familia de Texas) establece quién tiene la autoridad legal para firmar documentos en nombre de un menor de edad. Solo los padres legales (legal parents) — biológicos o adoptivos con orden de la corte — tienen esa autoridad. Los abuelos, tíos, primos, vecinos, amigos de la familia, padrinos, ni siquiera los padrastros sin custodia legal — ninguno de ellos puede firmar legalmente un waiver que ate a un menor a renunciar a sus derechos legales. Esto significa que si la abuela llevó al niño al cumpleaños, si el tío llevó a los sobrinos al parque, si el padrino llevó al ahijado, si el padrastro lo llevó pero sin tener adopción legal — el waiver firmado por esa persona no es válido contra el niño. El niño retiene completamente su derecho de demandar.

Combinando Delfingen + Family Code § 153.073, la mayoría de los waivers que los parques de trampolines de Texas usan contra familias hispanas tienen al menos dos vulnerabilidades fatales. Por eso atacamos esos waivers — y por eso ganamos.

Ciudades donde tenemos experiencia y por qué su caso vale más en Texas

Desde nuestras tres oficinas — Houston (sede principal), Austin, y Beaumont — manejamos casos de lesiones en parques de trampolines en todo Texas. Las regiones que conocemos a fondo:

Houston metropolitano: Pasadena, Spring Branch, Sharpstown, Gulfton, Alief, North Houston, Bellaire, West University, Sugar Land, Katy, Cypress, Spring, The Woodlands, Pearland, Friendswood, Clear Lake, Baytown, La Porte. Esta región tiene la mayor concentración de parques de trampolines de Texas, incluyendo Sky Zone Sugar Land (donde ocurrió el incidente fatal de Lakhani en la pared de escalada), Urban Air Webster, Urban Air Pearland, Urban Air Tomball, Altitude Houston, Cosmic Jump (donde se obtuvo el veredicto histórico de $11.485 millones), Bounce U Pasadena, Pump It Up Cypress, Get Air Houston, Defy Houston, Rebounderz Pearland, y muchos más. La corte civil del condado de Harris (Harris County District Court) tiene una reputación de ser favorable al demandante en casos catastróficos pediátricos.

Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitano: Oak Cliff, Pleasant Grove, West Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, Irving, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Lewisville, Carrollton, Richardson, Denton, Fort Worth (North Side, East Side), Bedford, Hurst, Euless, Southlake, Keller, Grapevine. Aquí está el incidente notorio de Urban Air Southlake donde la gerencia explícitamente le dijo al empleado en un mensaje de texto interno “do NOT call 911” después de que un niño se rompiera una pierna. Ese mensaje fue evidencia decisiva. Las cortes del condado de Dallas y de Tarrant tienen historiales mixtos pero las recientes consolidaciones de Sky Zone, Urban Air, y Altitude bajo manos de capital privado han hecho los casos más demandables.

San Antonio metropolitano: West Side, South Side, Northeast Side, Schertz, Cibolo, New Braunfels, Universal City, Converse, Live Oak, San Marcos. Sky Zone San Antonio, Urban Air New Braunfels, Altitude San Antonio. La corte del condado de Bexar es históricamente favorable a familias hispanas en casos pediátricos.

Valle del Río Grande: McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, Pharr, Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, San Benito, Donna, Mercedes, La Joya, Rio Grande City, Roma, Laredo. La región hispana más densa de Texas. Aquí los parques de trampolines son menos numerosos pero los casos más graves porque las familias frecuentemente cruzan tres condados o más para llegar al parque más cercano. Sky Zone Pharr, Urban Air McAllen, Altitude Brownsville. Las cortes de los condados de Hidalgo, Cameron, y Webb son favorables a demandantes hispanos.

El Paso: El Paso Centro, East Side, Northeast, Mission Valley, Cielo Vista. Urban Air El Paso, Sky Zone El Paso. La corte del condado de El Paso (Distrito 41 y 65) tiene jurados predominantemente hispanos y es donde la doctrina Delfingen nació.

Beaumont y el Sureste de Texas: Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange, Nederland, Groves, Lumberton, Vidor, Silsbee, Jasper, Lufkin, Nacogdoches. Aunque la población hispana en esta región es proporcionalmente menor que en Houston o el Valle, está creciendo rápidamente. Tenemos una oficina en Beaumont específicamente para servir a las familias del sureste de Texas. La corte del condado de Jefferson tiene un historial sólido en casos catastróficos.

Austin y Texas Central: Austin, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Cedar Park, Leander, Georgetown, Buda, Kyle, San Marcos. Urban Air Austin, Altitude Austin, Sky Zone Round Rock. Nuestra oficina de Austin atiende esta región.

Otras regiones: Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland-Odessa (donde ocurrió el caso de Shawn Parker), Tyler, Longview, Waco, Killeen, Temple, Abilene, Wichita Falls, College Station-Bryan. Manejamos casos en todas estas regiones.

Casos reales: Familias que ganaron en Texas

Cosmic Jump Sugar Land — $11.485 millones (2023). Una niña pequeña sufrió una lesión catastrófica de cuello en la sección de “foam pit” del parque cuando los pads de espuma estaban gastados y la profundidad era inadecuada. El veredicto de jurado de $11.485 millones marcó un récord en casos de lesión pediátrica en parques de diversión en el condado de Fort Bend. La defensa intentó usar el waiver firmado por la madre — escrito solamente en inglés — para evadir la responsabilidad. La corte rechazó ese argumento.

Lakhani — Sky Zone Sugar Land. Un caso fatal en la pared de escalada (climbing wall) dentro del complejo de Sky Zone. La familia Lakhani demandó al parque, al franquiciante, al fabricante de la pared, y a la compañía de mantenimiento. El caso resaltó que las atracciones secundarias dentro de los parques de trampolines (climbing walls, ninja warrior courses, dunk courts, foam pits, dodgeball arenas, slack lines) tienen sus propias vulnerabilidades de seguridad y sus propias capas de responsabilidad legal.

Shawn Parker — Odessa. Un menor sufrió lesiones graves en un parque de trampolines en la región de Midland-Odessa. La investigación reveló deficiencias críticas en el entrenamiento del personal y en el mantenimiento del equipo.

Urban Air Southlake. Un mensaje de texto interno entre la gerencia del parque diciendo a un empleado “do NOT call 911” después de que un niño se rompiera una pierna se convirtió en evidencia central de mala fe corporativa. La pregunta del jurado: si el parque negaba ayuda médica de emergencia para evitar reportes de incidentes, ¿qué más estaba escondiendo? La consecuencia financiera fue severa.

Cerna v. Sky Zone (Tex. 2025). La Corte Suprema de Texas confirmó que ciertas cláusulas en los waivers de Sky Zone son inaplicables en casos de gross negligence, abriendo la puerta a casos pediátricos catastróficos que antes parecían bloqueados.

Hay docenas más. Casos que terminaron en finiquito confidencial — donde la familia recibió millones pero no se permite hablar públicamente del monto. Casos que están actualmente en litigación. Casos que estamos investigando ahora. Cada caso tiene patrones comunes: pads gastados, redes rotas, supervisores adolescentes sin entrenamiento, ratios de jumpers excesivos, waivers en inglés, “no llame al 911”, reportes de incidentes que desaparecen.

Lo que tiene que hacer ahora — los primeros 72 horas son críticas

Si su hijo se lastimó en un parque de trampolines en Texas en las últimas 72 horas, tome estos pasos en este orden:

1. Atención médica primero, todo lo demás segundo. Lleve a su hijo a la sala de emergencia. Si la lesión es grave (golpe en la cabeza, dolor en el cuello/espalda, dificultad para respirar, sangrado severo, deformidad obvia de hueso), llame al 911 — no maneje al hospital usted misma. Recuerde EMTALA: el hospital tiene que atenderlo sin importar nada.
2. NO firme nada que el parque le ponga enfrente. No firme un finiquito. No firme una autorización para liberar registros médicos al seguro del parque. No firme un “Statement of Incident” que ellos preparen. No firme un acuerdo de “no demandar a cambio de un reembolso de $50”. Estas son trampas legales diseñadas para anular sus derechos.
3. NO hable con el ajustador de seguros del parque. Ellos van a llamarla en las primeras 24 a 48 horas. Van a sonar amigables. Van a hablar español. Van a ofrecer “ayuda con los gastos médicos”. Lo que en realidad están haciendo es grabando la llamada (Texas es un estado de “one-party consent” — pueden grabar sin pedirle permiso) y construyendo una defensa contra usted. Diga: “Voy a hablar con un abogado primero” y termine la llamada.
4. Documente todo. Tome fotos de la lesión (con la fecha visible — use la cámara de su celular que automáticamente pone fecha). Tome fotos del lobby del parque, del equipo donde ocurrió la lesión si todavía está allí, de cualquier señal de seguridad o falta de señalización. Tome fotos de los recibos de pago, de los formularios que le dieron, de la pulsera de admisión. Guarde toda mensajería de texto, correos electrónicos, mensajes de voz que el parque le mande.
5. Identifique testigos. Si otra familia vio lo que pasó, pídale el nombre y número de teléfono. Si su hijo tenía amigos con él, anote sus nombres también. Los testigos imparciales son evidencia oro en estos casos.
6. Pida copias de TODO. Pida una copia del waiver que firmó. Pida una copia del reporte de incidente que el parque preparó (tienen una obligación de darle una copia). Pida una copia de cualquier video de las cámaras de seguridad. Si se niegan, no insista en el momento — anótelo. Su abogado va a pedirlo formalmente con una “Spoliation Letter” (Carta de Preservación de Evidencia).
7. Llame a un abogado de lesiones personales con experiencia en parques de trampolines — esto significa nosotros. Llame al 1-888-288-9911 o al (713) 528-9070. Hablamos español. La consulta es gratis. No le cobramos nada hasta que ganemos su caso. Y enviamos una “Spoliation Letter” al parque dentro de las primeras 24 horas para evitar que destruyan la evidencia (los videos de seguridad típicamente se sobreescriben en 30 a 90 días si nadie los pide).

Lupe Peña — Su contacto directo en español

Lupe Peña, miembro clave de nuestro equipo, habla español como lengua materna. No es traducción de Google. No es una intérprete contratada por hora. Lupe entiende los matices culturales — el respeto que se le debe a la abuela, la incomodidad de hablar de dinero, el miedo de hablar con autoridades, el dolor invisible de ver a un hijo sufrir y no saber qué hacer. Lupe ha guiado a más de 200 familias hispanas a través del proceso legal en Texas. Su número directo es (713) 528-9070. Ella le va a explicar todo, paso a paso, sin presionarla, sin lenguaje legal incomprensible. La consulta es gratis. La conversación es confidencial. Y si decide no contratarnos, no le cobramos nada — usted sigue siendo dueña de toda la información que compartió.

El abogado: Ralph Manginello

Ralph Manginello es el abogado fundador de The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC (conocido como Attorney 911 / Atty911). Ha litigado casos catastróficos de lesión personal en Texas durante más de 20 años. Lleva personalmente cada caso de parque de trampolines — no se los pasa a un asociado junior, no los manda a un “settlement mill”. Si su caso requiere ir a juicio, Ralph va al juicio. Ha conseguido finiquitos y veredictos en los millones para familias hispanas en Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, McAllen, Brownsville, y todo Texas.

Sin costo hasta que ganemos

Trabajamos en una base de “contingency fee” (honorarios contingentes). Esto significa que usted no nos paga nada por adelantado. No paga consulta. No paga “retainer”. No paga honorarios por hora. No paga costos de investigación. No paga costos de testigos peritos. No paga absolutamente nada hasta que ganemos su caso. Si ganamos, nuestros honorarios salen del finiquito o veredicto — un porcentaje establecido por contrato escrito que usted aprueba antes de empezar. Si no ganamos, usted no nos debe nada. Cero. Esto significa que podemos representar a familias que no podrían pagar a un abogado de otra manera. Y significa que tomamos solo casos que creemos que vamos a ganar — porque nuestro éxito depende del suyo.

Llámenos hoy

Teléfono: 1-888-288-9911 (línea gratuita) o (713) 528-9070 (Houston).
Correo electrónico: ralph@atty911.com
Oficina principal: 1177 W Loop S, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77027
Oficina en Austin: Austin, TX — (713) 528-9070
Oficina en Beaumont: Beaumont, TX — (713) 528-9070

Hablamos español. Atendemos a familias hispanas en todo Texas. La consulta es gratis. Su caso es confidencial. Su estatus migratorio no afecta sus derechos. Su hijo merece justicia.

The evidence preservation letter — what we send to the trampoline park within 24 hours of being retained

This is the actual letter we send to a trampoline park, its franchisor, its insurer, and any other identified defendant within 24 hours of being retained on a Texas trampoline-park injury case. We are publishing it here because parents and other lawyers ask us routinely what a real “spoliation letter” looks like and what it demands. If you are reviewing a case, this letter is the gold standard. If you are a parent, this is what is happening behind the scenes the moment you sign our retainer. The version below is templated for publication; the version we send is customized with the specific incident facts, parties, and evidence we already know about.

This letter goes out the day we are retained. We do not wait. We do not negotiate the wording. We do not soften the demands. The reason is simple: surveillance video at most parks is overwritten on a 30-, 60-, or 90-day cycle. Internal Slack messages are auto-archived after 90 days at most franchisors. Equipment maintenance logs in handwritten format get “lost” or “thrown away during the renovation.” If we wait, the evidence disappears. By the time the family hires a lawyer who waits two weeks, three weeks, six weeks, the most damning evidence is gone. We do not let that happen on our cases.

If you are a parent, you do not need to send this letter yourself. You should not. The moment you retain us, this goes out under our letterhead, with our authority, with our follow-through. We track every recipient’s receipt and we follow up with each one until we have a written compliance confirmation. We have the team and the systems to do this in hours, not weeks.

Parent checklists — printable, sharable, and unflinchingly honest

Use these checklists before you go to a trampoline park, while you are inside, after an injury, and in the weeks that follow. They are written from the perspective of a Texas catastrophic-injury law firm that has reviewed hundreds of these cases. They are not designed to be diplomatic. They are designed to keep your child alive and your legal rights intact.

Checklist 1: The 10-minute pre-visit research protocol

Before you book a party, before you buy day passes, before you walk through the door of any Texas trampoline park, spend ten minutes doing this. It costs nothing. It has saved lives.

1. Search the park name + “lawsuit” on Google. Use quotation marks: “Sky Zone Sugar Land lawsuit” or “Urban Air Pearland lawsuit.” Read the first page of results. If there are multiple lawsuits, that is a pattern. If there is a wrongful-death case, walk away from this park.
2. Search the park name + “injury” + “Texas” on Google News. Look for local news coverage of incidents. Local TV stations cover trampoline-park injuries when they are bad. If you find one, read it carefully — was a child paralyzed, killed, or hospitalized? Was 911 called? Did the park comment? Park spokespeople who deflect responsibility (“we are reviewing the incident”) tell you what they will say if your child is next.
3. Search the park’s address on the CPSC SaferProducts.gov database. Go to SaferProducts.gov and type the park name. Reports filed by injured consumers and ER staff are a goldmine. If you see a report that matches the equipment your child will be using (foam pit, dunk court, climbing wall, ninja course), reconsider.
4. Check Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and Google Reviews — but read the 1-star and 2-star reviews first. The 5-star reviews are filtered, paid, or written by people who had a one-time good experience. The 1-star reviews are the truth: “The pads were torn.” “Staff did nothing when my son hit his head.” “They wouldn’t call an ambulance.” Take the 1-star reviews seriously.
5. Look up the corporate parent. Sky Zone is owned by CircusTrix LLC, which is owned by Palladium Equity. Urban Air, Altitude, Defy, and Launch are owned by Unleashed Brands LLC, controlled by Seidler Equity. These are private-equity portfolios, optimized for cost reduction. The cost reduction comes out of staff training, equipment maintenance, and safety. This is not editorial; this is documented in their investor disclosures and operating cost trends.
6. Verify the park’s insurance. Some park leases require the operator to carry $5M general liability, but the operator carries only $1M because they did not read the lease. Ask, “What is your general liability coverage limit?” If the staff does not know, ask for the manager. If the manager does not know, leave.
7. Check Wayback Machine on the park’s website. Go to web.archive.org, paste the park’s URL, and look at the website from a year ago. Compare the safety claims today with the safety claims a year ago. Have they removed safety claims? That can mean they got sued and an attorney made them stop saying it.
8. Search the park manager or owner’s name on the Texas court records search and PACER. If the manager or owner has been sued for personal injury before, that is pattern. If they have been sued for negligent supervision before, that is a pattern. Their case history travels with them.
9. Read the waiver online before you go. Most parks post the waiver on their website. Read it. Look for $100 caps on damages. Look for arbitration clauses. Look for “I am also signing on behalf of any other party” language (this is the Family Code § 153.073 trap). If the waiver is unconscionable, you do not want to be in the building.
10. Decide if it is worth it. After ten minutes, you will have a clear picture. If the park has multiple lawsuits, weak insurance, an unconscionable waiver, and a corporate parent optimizing for cost reduction — go to a different facility. Or take your child to a public park instead. Trampolines are not the only way to have fun.

Checklist 2: The 7-question phone-call script

If after the 10-minute research the park is still a possibility, call the park before you go. Use this script. If they refuse to answer, walk away.

1. “What is your maximum jumper-to-supervisor ratio per court?” The right answer is 1:25 or better. Worse than 1:50 is dangerous. If they say “we do not have a fixed ratio” or “it depends on the day,” that is a red flag.
2. “Are all of your staff CPR-certified and AED-certified?” The right answer is “yes, every staff member on duty.” If they say “the manager is” or “some are,” walk away.
3. “How often do you replace the foam in the foam pit?” The right answer is every 6-12 months for the pit blocks, with daily rotation. If they say “as needed” or do not know, that is a red flag.
4. “What is your incident-report process? Will I get a copy if my child is injured?” The right answer is yes, with a written copy provided same-day. If they say “we do not share that,” walk away.
5. “Will I be required to sign a waiver, and may I see it before I arrive?” The right answer is yes, here is the link / yes, I will email it now. If they say “you can read it when you arrive,” walk away. The waiver should be available for your review without time pressure.
6. “What is your general liability insurance coverage limit?” Every park manager should know this. If they do not, ask for the regional manager. The right answer is $5M or higher with a major underwriter (Liberty Mutual, Chubb, AIG, Travelers).
7. “How many incidents requiring 911 have you had at this location in the last 12 months?” Almost every park will say “I am not sure” or “I cannot share that.” That refusal is itself the answer. If they say “zero,” ask them to put it in writing on the booking confirmation. They will not. That is also the answer.

Checklist 3: Lobby inspection — what to look at the first 90 seconds

You walk in. Before your child runs to the courts, do this 90-second visual sweep.

• Padding around springs: Walk to the nearest court. Look at the orange/red/blue padding that covers the springs and the metal frame. Is it cracked? Are there gaps where the frame is exposed? Are pieces taped down? Has the foam compressed flat? If yes — leave.
• The foam pit: Look into the foam pit. Are the foam blocks so compressed they look like rocks? Can you see the bottom of the pit through the gaps? Is there any liquid in the pit (sweat, vomit, cleaning fluid)? If yes — leave.
• Court monitors: How old do they look? If they are visibly under 18, ask. Texas law allows 16-17 year olds to work at trampoline parks but requires limits on hours and certain duties. Are they on their phone? Are they engaging with kids or watching them? Are there enough of them?
• Posted rules: Are the rules posted clearly at the entrance to each court? Are they in English and Spanish? Are they in font large enough to read from across the lobby? Or are they in tiny print, hidden behind a dispenser, in English only?
• First-aid station: Is there a visible first-aid station? Do you see an AED on the wall? Do you see staff who look prepared for an emergency? Or is the front desk just a teenager scanning wristbands?
• Cleanliness: Is the lobby clean? Are the bathrooms clean? Is the snack-bar food being handled with gloves? A facility that does not clean the lobby does not clean the foam pit.
• The waiver tablet: Is the tablet positioned so you can read the waiver before signing? Or is it angled and rushed by the attendant? Can you scroll? Can you take your time? If they pressure you to sign quickly, that is a red flag.
• Music volume: Is the music so loud you cannot hear staff give safety instructions? Is the music so loud you cannot hear your child if they call out for help? If yes — leave or insist they turn it down.
• Crowd density: How many jumpers are on each court right now? If it looks like a packed nightclub, walk away. Crowding is the single biggest predictor of injury.
• Birthday party chaos: Is there a birthday party happening that has the entire lobby in disarray? Birthday parties are when parks are most overwhelmed and most dangerous. Reschedule.

Checklist 4: Walk-out red flags — leave immediately if you see any of these

You are inside. The wristbands are on. Your child is starting to play. You see one of these. Leave anyway. The day pass is not worth your child’s life.

• An adult drinking alcohol on the trampolines (parks adjacent to bars or family-entertainment-centers sometimes allow this — never acceptable).
• A staff member smoking, vaping, or appearing impaired.
• A jumper bleeding on the equipment, with no immediate cleaning protocol.
• A child who fell, cried, and is being told “you are fine, get back up” by a staff member with no medical training.
• A staff member refusing to call 911 when a parent asks.
• A line of jumpers stacked above the marked maximum-capacity sign at any court.
• An adult jumping with a small child on the same trampoline at the same time. This is the leading cause of “trampoline fracture” — multi-jumper rebound effect. Multiple jumpers per trampoline are forbidden by ASTM F2970-22.
• The dunk lane has no foam landing pad below the basket, just bare trampoline surface.
• The foam pit has children at the bottom while children are launching from above.
• A staff member visibly afraid to discipline a misbehaving older teenager or adult patron.
• You see the same liquid spot on the trampoline bed that was there when you walked in (it was not cleaned).
• The AED sign is on the wall but the cabinet is empty.
• A parent is yelling at a manager and the manager is yelling back. Do not get in line for the manager — get out the door.
• The party-room door is locked and an adult-only “afterhours” event is being staged while children are still on the courts. This pattern is associated with alcohol service, attendance overflow, and reduced supervision.

Checklist 5: Rules to teach your child before they jump (5-minute conversation in the car)

Have this conversation in the car on the way to the park. Not after they have wristbands. Not after they have spotted their friends. Now. They will roll their eyes. Have the conversation anyway.

• One person per trampoline. Always. Multi-jumper trampolines cause “trampoline fractures” — the smaller jumper absorbs the rebound force from the larger jumper. This is the #1 mechanism of pediatric trampoline-park injury.
• No flips, no somersaults, no inverted aerials — even if other kids are doing them. Inversion injuries are the leading cause of trampoline-park spinal cord injury (SCIWORA — Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality).
• Stay away from the springs and the metal frame. Even if the padding looks intact, the springs can still pinch and tear.
• If you fall in the foam pit, do not panic. Lie still. Wave to the court monitor. Ask for help climbing out. Do not let other kids land on you.
• If you hit your head, stop jumping immediately. Tell a parent or staff member, no matter how minor it feels. Concussions do not always feel like a concussion.
• If your wrist, ankle, knee, or shoulder hurts, stop jumping immediately. “Walking it off” makes injuries worse, especially Salter-Harris growth-plate fractures, which can cause permanent limb-length discrepancy if compounded.
• The dunk court is the most dangerous court. If you must use it, no flips, no double-dunks, no “stunts.”
• If you feel sick, cold, or weak after jumping a long time, tell a parent. Rhabdomyolysis can develop in 6-48 hours after intense jumping. Weakness, brown urine, severe muscle pain — these are emergency signs.
• If a staff member tells you to do something unsafe, refuse and find a parent. Staff who pressure kids to “go bigger” are creating liability — and danger.
• Do not let anyone push you, throw you, or “spot” you onto the trampoline. If you fall awkwardly because of someone else’s force, that is their fault, not yours.
• If you are on the climbing wall, ninja warrior course, or slack line, the same rules apply: no horseplay, no “spotting” by friends, no jumping off at the top. These auxiliary attractions have killed children — Lakhani at Sky Zone Sugar Land is a documented climbing-wall fatality.

Checklist 6: The 72-hour post-incident playbook

Your child was hurt. The first 72 hours determine the strength of any future legal claim. Follow this exactly.

1. Hour 0-1: Medical first. Call 911 if there is any indication of serious injury — head trauma, neck/spine pain, breathing problems, severe bleeding, deformity, loss of consciousness, vomiting after head impact, persistent crying you cannot calm. Do not let the park talk you out of calling 911. They have a financial reason to suppress incident reports. Your child does not.
2. Hour 1-2: At the ER, document. Give the doctors the truth about what happened: where the child was injured, on what equipment, doing what activity, what staff did, what staff did not do. The ER intake notes become evidence. Do not let anyone — including a well-meaning relative — tell the ER “she just fell at home.” That destroys the case.
3. Hour 2-4: Photos and witnesses. If you are still at the park or can return safely, take photos of: the equipment where the incident occurred, the wristband, the lobby waiver tablet, any visible damage, any other people who saw it. Get names and phone numbers of any other parents or kids who witnessed it. Do not delete any of these. Save them to cloud backup.
4. Hour 4-24: Do not sign anything from the park. They will hand you a “release” or “claim form.” Do not sign. They will offer you a refund — fine, take the refund, but do not sign anything beyond a credit-card refund receipt. They will offer “free passes” — do not accept. They will ask you to “make a statement” — politely decline.
5. Hour 4-24: Do not talk to their insurance. They will call. Do not engage. “I will speak to my attorney first. Please send any communication in writing.” Hang up.
6. Hour 4-24: Call a personal-injury attorney with trampoline-park experience. Call us: 1-888-288-9911 or (713) 528-9070. We are available 24/7. We send the spoliation letter immediately, we open the file immediately, and we begin the evidence-preservation campaign before the park’s video gets overwritten.
7. Hour 24-48: Document the medical course. Note every medication, every test, every diagnosis, every limitation. Take photos of casts, splints, surgical scars (if any). Record voice memos describing your child’s symptoms — pain levels, sleep disruption, emotional state, fear of returning to activity.
8. Hour 48-72: Reconstruct the day. Sit down with your spouse or partner and write out the full day’s timeline — when you arrived, who was on duty, what you saw, what your child said, what happened. Memory degrades fast. Do this within 72 hours.
9. Hour 48-72: Audit your social media. Do not post about the incident. Do not post about pursuing legal action. Set all your social profiles to private. The defense will use anything they can find. Your TikToks about the trampoline park from last year are now exhibits.
10. Day 3 and beyond: Watch for delayed-onset injuries. Concussions can manifest delayed symptoms days later. Rhabdomyolysis can hit at 6-48 hours. Compartment syndrome can appear days after a fracture. If your child is “fine” at the ER but showing symptoms a week later, return to medical care immediately and document the visit.
11. Week 1 and beyond: Track economic impact. Save every receipt — co-pays, prescriptions, parking, mileage to medical appointments, equipment (crutches, braces, wheelchair rentals), tutoring (if missed school), childcare for siblings while you take the injured child to appointments. These are recoverable damages but only if documented.

Checklist 7: The rhabdomyolysis warning card — keep this for the week after

Rhabdomyolysis (“rhabdo”) is a medical emergency in which damaged muscle tissue releases myoglobin into the bloodstream, causing kidney failure if not treated. It can develop 6 to 72 hours after intense, sustained, novel exercise — exactly the kind of activity that happens at a trampoline park, especially during birthday parties, dodgeball tournaments, dunk-court marathons, or “all-night glow jumps.” Pediatric rhabdo from trampoline parks is documented in the medical literature (Kasmire et al. 2016, others).

If your child played at a trampoline park, watch for these symptoms in the next 7 days:

• Severe muscle pain that gets worse, not better, in the days after activity.
• Muscle weakness — especially difficulty climbing stairs, lifting their backpack, or getting up from a chair.
• Tea-colored, cola-colored, or dark-brown urine. This is myoglobin. This is an emergency.
• Reduced urine output or no urination for hours.
• Confusion, dizziness, fatigue out of proportion to the exercise.
• Fever, nausea, vomiting.
• Swelling of the affected muscle group.
• Tingling, numbness, or weakness in a limb that suggests compartment syndrome.

If you see any of these symptoms, take your child to the ER immediately and tell the triage nurse: “I am concerned about rhabdomyolysis. My child was at a trampoline park [X days ago]. Please run a CK level and a urinalysis.” The standard test is a CK (creatine kinase) blood test; CK levels above 5,000 IU/L confirm rhabdo, with severe cases reaching 100,000+ IU/L. Treatment is aggressive IV fluids and monitoring of kidney function. Untreated rhabdo causes acute kidney injury and can be fatal.

If a trampoline park’s “marathon jump” or “all-night” or “dodgeball tournament” event led to rhabdo in your child, that is a viable claim — even if there was no fall, no impact, and no equipment failure. The park’s failure to enforce rest intervals, hydration breaks, and age-appropriate activity duration is itself a breach of duty.

Checklist 8: The infection-watch card — when the wound or skin becomes the case

Section E.16 of our investigative protocol tracks the infection vector — fungal, bacterial, MRSA, viral — that emerges from inadequately cleaned trampoline-park surfaces (foam pits, pads, dodgeballs, lobby restrooms, snack bars). Foam blocks in particular are virtually impossible to sanitize without industrial removal and replacement; they harbor sweat, blood, vomit, and pathogens. If your child develops any of these symptoms in the 7-21 days after a visit, document and seek care:

• A skin lesion that started as a small bump and became red, warm, painful, and pus-filled (possible MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).
• An abscess or boil that does not respond to standard care.
• Athlete’s-foot-style scaling or itching on the bottom of the feet, palms, or between digits (possible Tinea — fungal).
• Plantar warts (HPV) appearing on the soles of the feet weeks after a barefoot trampoline visit.
• Conjunctivitis (“pink eye”) in the days after a visit, especially if shared with a sibling who also visited.
• Gastrointestinal illness in the family in the 24-72 hours after a visit, especially if multiple family members are sick (possible norovirus or rotavirus from contaminated surfaces or food handlers).
• A bloodborne-pathogen exposure, even minor — for example, your child encountered another jumper bleeding on the foam pit and that pit was not removed from service. Document, photograph if possible, and get a baseline blood test from your pediatrician.

Infection cases require fast medical workup — culture, sensitivity, sometimes blood tests for HIV/HCV/HBV exposure if the source patient was bleeding — and they require fast legal action because the source-tracing window is short. Save every medical record, every prescription, every photo of the rash or wound. Save the date of the trampoline visit. Save any text messages or photos from the day of the visit. The infection vertical is one of the most-litigated and least-known categories of trampoline-park liability.

The closing word: Why this matters, why we are who you call, and why now

The systemic recap

Texas has more trampoline parks per capita than almost any state. The corporate parents of those parks — Sky Zone (CircusTrix LLC / Palladium Equity), Urban Air / Altitude / Defy / Launch (Unleashed Brands LLC / Seidler Equity), and a long tail of regional operators including Get Air, Rebounderz, Bounce U, Pump It Up, Cosmic Jump, and others — have consolidated under private-equity ownership that optimizes for cost reduction. Cost reduction comes out of staff training (16-year-old “court monitors” supervising 100+ jumpers), padding rotation (foam compressed flat for 18 months), and incident transparency (“do NOT call 911”). The American Academy of Pediatrics has formally recommended against trampoline use for children since its 1999 policy statement, with reaffirmations in 2012 and 2019. The CPSC has documented a steady upward trajectory of pediatric trampoline-park injuries since the commercial-park boom of 2011-2015. The peer-reviewed literature is unambiguous — Teague et al. (Pediatrics, January 2024), the AJR/R3J 2024 imaging series, Kasmire et al. (2016) on pediatric rhabdomyolysis, Eager et al. (2012) on biomechanics of multi-jumper rebound, and a continuous stream of single-case reports of catastrophic spine, brain, and visceral injuries.

And yet the Texas Legislature in 2023 declined — again — to pass any meaningful regulation of commercial trampoline facilities. Texas Occupations Code Chapter 2151 carves in inflatable amusement devices but leaves trampoline courts largely outside any state oversight. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation does not license trampoline parks. The Texas Department of State Health Services does not inspect them. Local jurisdictions vary wildly: the City of Houston’s permitting is paper-only; Sugar Land has slightly more rigorous fire-code review; Austin and San Antonio differ. The result is a market in which an industry sells a product it knows is dangerous to children, then uses English-only waivers, $100 damage caps, mandatory arbitration, and “do NOT call 911” internal policies to evade accountability when those children are catastrophically hurt.

This is not a marketing pitch. This is the documented record. Cosmic Jump’s $11.485 million verdict in Sugar Land, Sky Zone’s wrongful-death cases (Lakhani, Alicea, Hanks, Hiett), Urban Air’s “do NOT call 911” Southlake disclosure, the Cerna and Beaumont v. Geter Texas Supreme Court cases (2025), the Trevino Texas Court of Appeals bilingual-formation decision (2025), the documented internal policies in Sky Zone’s “BE AWARE OF THE PADS” training manual, the Pennsylvania Santiago and Shultz decisions, the Missouri Karlin case, the New Jersey Coppi case — these are the facts.

What this firm does that other firms do not

The Manginello Law Firm (Attorney 911 / Atty911) is a Texas catastrophic-injury practice headquartered in Houston with offices in Austin and Beaumont. We have built a specific specialty around trampoline-park litigation in Texas. That specialization is not generic personal-injury work; it is a deep stack of:

• Doctrinal knowledge: Dresser fair-notice, Munoz parental-indemnity void, Moriel gross-negligence, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Chapter 41 punitive mechanics, Family Code § 153.073 signer authority, Delfingen bilingual contract formation, Sampson apparent-agency for franchisor reach, Tex. Occ. Code Ch. 2151 Class B inflatable carve-in, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 16.001/16.003 (statute of limitations and tolling for minors), §§ 33.001-013 (proportionate responsibility), §§ 71.003-021 (wrongful death and survival).
• Industry-pattern intelligence: the corporate consolidation map (CircusTrix/Palladium/Sky Zone; Unleashed Brands/Seidler/Urban Air-Altitude-Defy-Launch; ATP Alpha/UATP Management; Altitude Franchise Holdings; Launch Franchise Holdings), the training-curriculum gaps between franchisor materials and on-floor practice, the waiver-evolution archaeology that traces changes in waiver language to specific lawsuits.
• Evidence-preservation workflow: 24-hour spoliation letters, surveillance forensics, ESI metadata recovery, the Cellebrite/EnCase/Magnet AXIOM/FTK/X1/Hanzo/Pagefreezer/Smarsh forensic-tool pipeline, FRE 902(14) self-authentication, FRE 404(b) chain-wide pattern evidence, Texas Rule 202 pre-suit deposition workflow, Wayback Machine archival reconstruction.
• National jurisdictional map: we track every appellate decision in every state on trampoline-park waivers, parental-pre-injury releases, gross-negligence carve-outs, arbitration-clause challenges, and damages caps. Cerna, Beaumont v. Geter, Trevino, Santiago, Shultz, Karlin, Coppi, Hojnowski, Kirton, Woodman, Hawkins, Scott, Galloway, Blackwell, Alicea, Hanks, Hiett, BJ’s v. Rosen, Cooper, Anderson v. Hedstrom, Torres. We know which arguments win in which jurisdictions and how to translate them across state lines.
• Medical specialization: we have working relationships with pediatric neurosurgeons, pediatric orthopedic specialists (Salter-Harris classification), pediatric trauma surgeons, vascular surgeons (vertebral artery dissection), nephrologists (rhabdo and kidney injury), and concussion specialists (post-concussive syndrome and second-impact syndrome).

We do not pass these cases to junior associates. Ralph Manginello personally takes the deposition of every defense corporate representative, every staff supervisor, and every defense expert in our trampoline-park files. We do not “settlement-mill” these cases. If a case requires trial, we try it. Every jury we put a trampoline-park case in front of has returned a result that justified the choice to litigate rather than settle low.

We have a Spanish-speaking team led by Lupe Peña, native fluency, who has guided over 200 Hispanic families through the Texas civil-litigation system. We accept ITIN holders without complication. We help families navigate immigration-status concerns by separating civil-litigation rights (which are unaffected by status) from any unrelated immigration matters (which we refer to qualified immigration counsel as needed).

We accept these cases on a pure contingency basis. No fees. No costs. No retainer. No hourly billing. If we do not win, you owe us nothing.

The capacity statement: Who we are, plainly

The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Founded by Ralph P. Manginello. Practicing Texas catastrophic-injury law for over 20 years. Federal-court admitted. Headquartered at 1177 W Loop S, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77027. Additional offices in Austin and Beaumont. 4.9-star rating across 251+ verified client reviews. The firm is a member of the Houston Bar Association, the State Bar of Texas, and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. The firm is also the producer of the Attorney 911 podcast on Apple Podcasts (id 1773141988), where Ralph and guests discuss Texas personal-injury law in plain language.

Toll-free: 1-888-288-9911. Direct: (713) 528-9070. Email: ralph@atty911.com. The phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Available in English and Spanish. Free consultation. No obligation. No fee unless we win.

The urgency: Why right now matters

Every day that passes after a trampoline-park injury, evidence disappears. Surveillance video is overwritten on a 30-, 60-, or 90-day cycle at most facilities. Internal Slack and Teams messages are auto-archived after 90 days. Hand-written maintenance logs get “thrown out” during routine cleaning. Witnesses move on, change jobs, forget details. Defendants restructure entities. Insurance policies expire and are not renewed. Statutes of limitations run.

The Texas statute of limitations for personal injury is two years from the date of injury (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003). For a minor, the SOL is tolled until the child’s 18th birthday, after which the two-year clock starts (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.001). For a wrongful-death claim, the two-year clock runs from date of death (§ 71.004). These are hard deadlines. Miss them and the case is gone forever.

But the practical SOL — the date by which a case must be opened to be winnable — is much shorter. Surveillance video alone is gone in 30-90 days. So the question is not “do I have two years.” The question is “can I open the case and send the spoliation letter within the next two weeks.” If yes, we can save the evidence. If no, the defense gets to build their case in the dark while ours starves.

If your child was injured in the last 30 days, call now. Today. This minute. We will open the file before sundown. The spoliation letter goes out within 24 hours.

The transferability bridge — why our trampoline-park work informs how we handle every catastrophic-injury case

The same investigative skills and doctrinal frame that we apply to a trampoline-park case translate to every adjacent catastrophic-injury matter we handle: motor-vehicle and 18-wheeler crashes, hazing and Greek-life injuries, school-bus and daycare injuries, defective products, premises liability at FECs and entertainment venues, drowning and aquatic-facility cases, fairground and amusement-park cases, and any context where a corporate operator with private-equity ownership has optimized for cost reduction at the expense of children’s safety. If your child was hurt at a trampoline park, you should know that the same firm that takes that case also takes the related cases with the same intensity. We do not pick and choose; we build whole-family solutions.

The call to action

Call 1-888-288-9911 (toll-free) or (713) 528-9070 (direct) right now.

Or email ralph@atty911.com.

Or visit any of our three offices:

The consultation is free. We do not charge for the call. We do not charge for the meeting. We do not charge unless we win.

Hablamos español. Llame al 1-888-288-9911 o al (713) 528-9070. Lupe Peña le va a contestar y le va a explicar todo en español, paso a paso. La consulta es gratis. Si no ganamos, usted no paga.

If your child was hurt in a Texas trampoline park, you have rights. We exist to enforce them. The clock is running. Call now.

The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — d/b/a Attorney 911 / Atty911. Catastrophic personal injury. Texas-based. Federal-court admitted. 25+ years. 4.9-star client rating. Available 24/7. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win.