In the Town of Bullard, a Saturday afternoon is supposed to be about family, high school sports, and children making memories. But for many families in Smith County, a trip to a nearby trampoline park—perhaps a drive up to Urban Air or iJump in Tyler—ends in a way they never imagined. It ends with a sound that Kaitlin Hill, a mother who has become a national voice for trampoline safety, described as “the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.”
At Attorney911, we represent the families behind those screams. We represent the parents in the Town of Bullard sitting in a trauma bay at UT Health East Texas or CHRISTUS Mother Frances, watching a surgeon explain what happens when a child’s growth plate is destroyed at age nine. We know the terror of that moment because we have spent more than 25 years holding corporate giants accountable for the damage they do to families.
Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has been fighting for injury victims since 1998. He brings federal court experience from the Southern District of Texas and a history of litigating against Fortune 500 companies like BP following the Texas City refinery explosion. Our team includes associate attorney Lupe Peña, who used to sit on the other side of the table—defending insurance companies and recreational businesses against injury claims. He knows their playbook because he helped write it. Now, he uses that knowledge to dismantle the very waivers and defense tactics that trampoline parks in the Town of Bullard use to try and escape accountability.
If your child was injured on a trampoline in the Town of Bullard, whether at a commercial park or in a neighbor’s backyard, you don’t need a generalist. You need a firm that knows that the primary insurance policy is just the floor, not the ceiling. You need a legal team that can quote ASTM F2970 and ASTM F381 from memory. You need us.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24/7. Hablamos Español. No fee unless we win.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in the Town of Bullard
The trampoline industry wants you to believe that these injuries are “freak accidents” or part of the “inherent risk” of being active. The data says otherwise. According to a landmark study published in Pediatrics (the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics) in January 2024 by Teague et al., trampoline park injury trends are not slowing down. The study tracked 13,256 injuries and found that foam pits carry an injury rate of 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours, while “high-performance” jumping zones spike to 2.11 per 1,000.
In the Town of Bullard and across Smith County, these aren’t just numbers. They represent children with Salter-Harris growth plate fractures, teenagers with traumatic brain injuries, and adults with permanent spinal cord damage. A recent pictorial radiographic essay by the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR 2024) revealed that up to 1.6% of all pediatric emergency department trauma visits in the United States are now trampoline-related.
We see the patterns that the parks in the Tyler-Bullard area try to hide:
- The Double-Bounce: A 200-pound adult lands on the mat just as an 80-pound child from the Town of Bullard is launching. The energy transfer multiplies the child’s launch force by up to 4x. The child is no longer jumping; they are being thrown.
- The Compacted Foam Pit: Footholds and “paths” develop in foam pits that aren’t rotated weekly. A child dives in, thinking they are safe, and hits the concrete or “dense foam pad” at the bottom.
- The Training Gap: The person watching your child in the Town of Bullard is often a 16-year-old making minimum wage with less than four hours of safety training. They aren’t “court monitors”; they are teenagers on their phones while your child is in the air.
Why the Waiver You Signed in the Town of Bullard is Not a Wall
The trampoline park’s first move is to point at the iPad you signed at the kiosk and tell you that you have no case. In the Town of Bullard, we know how to answer that because we know Texas law.
Texas courts have a specific history with these documents. While parks rely on them, they are susceptible to several attack vectors that we deploy immediately:
The Gross Negligence Carve-Out
In Texas, a waiver cannot release a defendant from “gross negligence.” Under the Moriel standard established by the Texas Supreme Court, gross negligence involves an extreme degree of risk that the operator was subjectively aware of but consciously disregarded. When a park in the Tyler/Bullard area knows that its foam pit is shallow or its mats are torn and lets your child jump anyway, that is not an accident—it is gross negligence.
Look at the record. In Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million against Cosmic Jump after a 16-year-old fell through a torn trampoline slide onto a concrete floor. The jury found gross negligence despite the signed waiver. That is the largest reported jury verdict of its kind in the U.S., and it happened right here in Texas.
The Munoz Doctrine: Parental Indemnity
Since 1993, the case of Munoz v. II Jaz Inc. has stood for a clear principle in Texas: a parent generally cannot sign away a minor child’s direct personal injury claim. While the park may try to argue that an arbitration clause is enforceable under recent rulings like Cerna v. Pearland Urban Air (2025), the underlying right of the child to seek recovery for their injuries remains a powerful weapon in our hands.
The Delfingen Attack: Language Barriers
For our Spanish-speaking families in the Town of Bullard, we invoke the Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela doctrine. If you were presented with an English-only waiver and were not provided a translation or a meaningful opportunity to understand it in your native language, the contract may be void. Lupe Peña handles these cases directly, ensuring your family isn’t silenced by a language gap.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 today to have your waiver evaluated by a team that knows how to break it.
Catastrophic Injuries: What Bullard Families Face
We don’t use terms like “broken leg” because they don’t capture the medical reality our clients face. We speak the language of surgeons and life-care planners:
- Salter-Harris Type II Fractures: This is a fracture through the growth plate into the metaphysis. For a child in the Town of Bullard ISD athletic programs, this can mean a lifetime of limb-length discrepancy and corrective surgeries.
- SCIWORA: Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality. A child lands head-first in a foam pit near the Town of Bullard, their CT scan looks “normal,” but they are progressively losing feeling in their legs. These are pediatric emergencies that often go misdiagnosed as “panic attacks,” similar to the viral Elle Yona case that has reach 27 million views on TikTok.
- Exertional Rhabdomyolysis: This is the bridge to our major active litigation. We are currently handling a $10 million lawsuit against a major university involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure. We see this same pathology in children who jump for 90 minutes straight in the heat of a Texas summer without proper hydration. When muscle tissue breaks down and floods the kidneys with myoglobin, it is a life-threatening crisis. We know how to document it, how to prove it, and how to win it.
The 48-Hour Evidence Cycle in Smith County
In the Town of Bullard, the evidence that will win your case is vanishing while you are at the hospital.
- Surveillance Video: Most parks in the Tyler area use DVR systems that overwrite footage every 7 to 30 days. If we don’t send a formal spoliation letter immediately, the footage of your child’s fall is gone forever.
- Incident Reports: Parks often “revise” these reports once they realize a lawyer is involved. We demand the original metadata to see who edited the report and when.
- The “Don’t Call 911” Pattern: There is a documented industry pattern—surfaced in Tripadvisor reviews from Urban Air locations in Southlake and elsewhere—where employees are allegedly instructed by management to NOT call 911 following an injury. We investigate whether this systemic obstruction happened to your family in the Town of Bullard.
When you retain us, our spoliation letter goes out to the park, the franchisor (like Sky Zone, Inc. or Unleashed Brands), and their insurance tower within 24 hours. We don’t wait for them to “lose” the video.
Who is Really Liable for Your Child’s Injury?
We don’t just sue the local LLC. We perform corporate archeology on every case in the Town of Bullard. The money is almost always upstream.
The 5-Layer Defendant Stack we target includes:
- The Operator LLC: The entity running the physical park in the Tyler/Bullard area.
- The Franchisee: The business group that may own multiple locations across East Texas.
- The Franchisor: Entities like Sky Zone Franchising LLC or UATP Management (Urban Air). In the Damion Collins case, the franchisor was held responsible for 40% of a $15.6 million award because of a “systemic failure” to implement safety changes.
- The Corporate Parent: Sky Zone, Inc. (formerly CircusTrix) or Unleashed Brands (recently acquired by Seidler Equity Partners).
- The Component Manufacturers: The companies that made the torn mat, the faulty harness, or the unpadded wall.
For Town of Bullard families with backyard trampolines, the targets include manufacturers like Jumpking, Skywalker, or Bouncepro (Walmart’s private label). If a neighbor’s trampoline injured your child while they were playing in a backyard in the Town of Bullard, we navigate that Smith County homeowners’ insurance claim, even if the policy has an “absolute trampoline exclusion.” There is always a path to recovery for a child.
Why Choose Attorney911 for a Bullard Trampoline Case?
We aren’t just another personal injury firm. We are a firm with a moat built on expertise:
- 25+ Years of Battle: Ralph Manginello has taken on multinational corporations and won. The private equity sponsors behind the big trampoline chains (Palladium Equity for Sky Zone/DEFY; Seidler for Urban Air) hire the same kind of lawyers we’ve been beating for two decades.
- Insurance Defense Inside Knowledge: Lupe Peña knows exactly which waiver clauses hold up and which ones are full of holes because he used to write them. He knows how to counter the “Friendly Adjuster Call” and the “Med-Pay Trojan Horse” before you even pick up the phone.
- The Rhabdo Expertise: Our $10M UH hazing case means we have already retained the nation’s leading experts on rhabdomyolysis and kidney failure. We don’t have to learn the science for your Town of Bullard case—we already know it.
- No Upfront Cost: We advance every expense. The biomechanical engineer to reconstruct the double-bounce, the life-care planner to build the 50-year medical forecast—we pay it all. You only pay us if we win.
Frequently Asked Questions for Town of Bullard Families
What should I do if my child got hurt at a trampoline park near the Town of Bullard?
First, seek immediate medical attention at a Level 1 or 2 trauma center. Do not accept a “refund” or sign any “satisfaction” forms at the park—these are often disguised releases that can bar your claim. Photograph the scene immediately, especially the monitor positions and the condition of the equipment. Then, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 before the surveillance video is overwritten.
How long do I have to sue a trampoline park in Texas?
Under Texas law, the statute of limitations is generally two years. For injuries to minors in the Town of Bullard, the clock is often “tolled” until they turn eighteen, giving them until age twenty. However, you should never wait. The evidence clock is much shorter. If you wait even a month, the video, the monitor logs, and the version of the waiver you signed can be purged from the park’s computer system.
Can I sue Urban Air or Sky Zone if I signed a waiver?
Yes. As we proved in the Cosmic Jump case, a waiver does not protect a park from gross negligence. Furthermore, under the Munoz rule in Texas, you generally cannot waive your child’s right to sue for their own injuries. We also look for formation defects—if the waiver was electronic, was on a rushed kiosk, or if there was a language barrier, it may not be enforceable at all.
Is the foam pit actually safe for my child?
Medical data suggests foam pits are one of the most dangerous attractions. International standards like EN ISO 23659:2022 are much stricter than US voluntary standards, and many parks are phasing out foam pits in favor of airbags because of the “bottoming out” risk. If your child hit the bottom of a pit in an East Texas park, the park’s knowledge of that risk is a primary negligence factor.
How much money can my family get for a trampoline injury settlement?
Every case is unique, but the dollars involved in catastrophic cases are substantial. Published results range from $50,000 for simple fractures to $11.485 million for traumatic brain injuries and $15.6 million for paralysis. We build a Life-Care Plan that accounts for your child’s needs for the next 70 years, not just their current hospital bill.
What if my teenager was jumping with friends and I wasn’t there to sign the waiver?
This happens often at Bullard birthday parties. Under Texas Family Code § 153.073, only a parent or court-appointed conservator has the authority to sign for a child. If a friend’s parent or a grandparent signed the waiver, that signature is likely a legal nullity. The waiver is dead on arrival, and the park’s primary defense disappears.
Why is my child’s urine dark after jumping at a park in Tyler?
This is a medical emergency. “Cola-colored” urine is a hallmark sign of exertional rhabdomyolysis. It means muscle fibers are dying and clogging your child’s kidneys. This often happens 24-48 hours after an extended jumping session. Go to the ER at UT Health or CHRISTUS immediately and tell them your child was at a trampoline park. Then, call us. We lead the state in rhabdomyolysis litigation.
Your Child’s Recovery Starts Today
What happened to your child in the Town of Bullard wasn’t just “bad luck.” It was the predictable output of a system that puts margin ahead of your kid’s safety. The AAP has been warning about these hazards since 1999. The industry wrote its own safety floor with ASTM F2970, and then chose to operate below it.
The park has lawyers. The franchisor has lawyers. The corporate parent has private equity backers with billions of dollars. They have a system for denying your claim. We have a system for winning it.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español. Our Texas offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont are the launch point for a practice that handles cases in the Town of Bullard and across the country. Remember what client Chad Harris said: “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.”
We represent families. We represent children. We represent the parent who refuses to be ignored by a corporate risk-management team. The case starts with one phone call.
Attorney911 | The Manginello Law Firm
1-888-ATTY-911
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