“His feet hit the mat, and almost instantly his knees buckled down, and he just let out the worst scream that you could ever have heard from a child.”
Those words, spoken to ABC News by Kaitlin “Kati” Hill after her son Colton’s femur was shattered at a trampoline park, are the nightmare every parent in the Town of Happy fears. When you take your family for a Saturday afternoon of “Toddler Time” or a birthday party, you assume the facility is designed for safety. You assume the staff is trained. You assume that the “one jumper per bed” rule is more than just a poster on the wall—you assume it is a promise.
We know better. At Attorney911, led by our founding partner Ralph Manginello with over 25 years of courtroom experience, we have learned that trampoline injuries are rarely “accidents.” They are the predictable output of a multi-billion-dollar system that prioritizes throughput and margin over pediatric safety. Whether your child was injured at an Urban Air or Sky Zone in the surrounding Amarillo metro area, or on a backyard Jumpking or Skywalker in a Swisher County neighborhood, your family’s life changed in a single bounce.
The trampoline park industry is essentially self-regulated. These facilities operate under voluntary standards like ASTM F2970—rules they essentially wrote for themselves—and then frequently fail to meet even that low floor. When an eighty-pound child and a two-hundred-pound adult are allowed on the same court at the same time, the laws of physics do not care about the “inherent risk” language in the waiver you signed at the kiosk.
If you are reading this while sitting in a hospital room in Amarillo or at your kitchen table in the Town of Happy, there is something you need to know immediately: The clock is running. Evidence in these cases is engineered to disappear. Surveillance video is often overwritten in as little as seven to thirty days. Incident reports are “finalized” and sanitized of admissions. Waiver databases are purged.
We were built for this fight. Our team includes associate attorney Lupe Peña, who used to sit on the other side of the table—defending trampoline parks and recreational businesses against these exact claims. He knows their playbook because he helped write it. He knows which waiver clauses are airtight and which ones are full of holes under Texas law. We have gone head-to-head with Fortune 500 giants like BP and Walmart, and we bring that same relentless pressure to bear against the private-equity-backed conglomerates that own today’s jumping facilities.
What happened to your child wasn’t your fault. You signed the waiver because the line was long and the kiosk was fast. You let them jump because you wanted them to have fun. The responsibility for their safety sat with the park operator, and they failed. We are here to show you how to hold them accountable.
The Reality of Trampoline Injuries in the Town of Happy
Living in the Texas Panhandle, we understand the local patterns of recreation. For families in the Town of Happy, a trip to a commercial trampoline park usually means a drive north on I-27 toward the major facilities in Amarillo. These parks stay packed year-round, especially during our intense summer heat or the biting wind of winter. When these facilities fill to capacity, the ratio of court monitors to jumpers consistently collapses.
ASTM F2970, the industry standard, requires parks to maintain specific attendant ratios and enforce age-separated jumping zones. On a Saturday afternoon in a crowded Amarillo park, these rules are often the first to be ignored. We see children under age six—a demographic the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has warned against using trampolines since 1999—mixed with teenagers and adults.
In Swisher County backyards, we face a different set of hazards. Our Panhandle climate is uniquely brutal on recreational equipment. The intense UV exposure from the West Texas sun degrades polypropylene netting and mat fabric, making it brittle. Our high-wind events and “Northers” can misalign frames or displace springs. A backyard trampoline that looked safe last year might have invisible structural failures today.
Nationally, over 300,000 trampoline-related emergency room visits happen every year. In a community like the Town of Happy, those numbers aren’t just statistics; they represent neighbors, classmates, and teammates. When the medicine is catastrophic—traumatic brain injury (TBI), cervical spinal cord injury, or a shattered growth plate—the legal architecture of the case must be equally robust.
Why Texas Families Trust Our 25+ Years of Experience
Most personal injury firms handle a trampoline case like a standard slip-and-fall. They send a demand letter, hope for a quick settlement, and move on. We don’t. We treat these as high-stakes corporate accountability cases.
With federal court admission in the Southern District of Texas and a practice that handles cases nationwide, Ralph Manginello brings a level of sophistication to these claims that most local generalists cannot match. Our managing partner has spent over two decades holding negligent defendants accountable for life-altering injuries.
We currently litigate a $10 million lawsuit against a major university involving rhabdomyolysis and acute kidney failure—the same catastrophic muscle and organ breakdown we see in children who spend two hours jumping in a heated indoor park without hydration. We have built the expert networks and the medical litigation architecture to prove these complex physiological outcomes.
As our client Chad Harris said, “You are NOT just some client… You are FAMILY to them.” We represent the Town of Happy parents who are watching their child in a body cast, and we fight to ensure that child’s recovery fund is protected for life.
Mechanism of Injury: How the Law Fits the Physics
To win a case against a trampoline park or a manufacturer, we must explain the physics of the failure. The defense will always claim your child “landed wrong” or “ignored a rule.” Our job is to prove that the injury was the predictable output of a systemic failure.
The Double-Bounce: A Physics Trap
When a 200-pound adult lands on a trampoline mat at the same instant a 60-pound child from the Town of Happy is pushing off, the energy transfer multiplies the child’s launch force by up to 4x. The child is not jumping anymore; they are being thrown. This is the “double-bounce,” and it is the most common cause of pediatric tibia and femur fractures.
ASTM F2970 requires parks to separate jumpers by weight and size specifically to prevent this. When a park fails to enforce this rule—often because the teenage “court monitor” is on their phone or watching the wrong area—they are committing gross negligence. In Texas, gross negligence is the key that unlocks punitive damages and defeats most waiver defenses.
Foam Pit Failures and Cervical Injuries
Foam pits look soft, but for a jumper from the Town of Happy, they can be a trap. If the foam blocks have compacted over time or Haven’t been rotated according to the industry’s own depth specifications, a child can “bottom out” and strike the concrete or hard wood floor beneath the foam.
We cite the medical literature that has warned about this for years. Eager (2012) and more recently the AJR (2024) have documented that up to 1.6% of pediatric emergency department trauma visits are trampoline-related. A head-first landing into an unmaintained foam pit can cause vertebral artery dissection—a neurovascular injury that leads to a spinal cord stroke. This is the mechanism seen in the viral Elle Yona case, which has reached over 27 million views on TikTok. It is often misdiagnosed as an anxiety attack in the ER, delaying critical treatment.
Defective Harnesses and Climbing Walls
The multi-attraction parks near the Town of Happy have expanded into climbing walls and ziplines. These attractions rely on auto-belay systems and harnesses. In the 2019 Matthew Lu case in Gastonia, a 12-year-old fell over 20 feet onto concrete because of a harness failure. The park later publicly admitted “human error” and removed the attraction.
When a park bolts a climbing wall onto a trampoline facility, they are entering a different regulatory world. In Texas, while the main trampoline decks are largely unregulated, Class B adventurous rides like bungee trampolines or indoor coasters fall under the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) inspection regime (Tex. Occ. Code Ch. 2151). We know how to pull those TDI inspection records and find the regulatory gap that proves the park’s negligence.
Why the “Signed Waiver” in the Town of Happy Isn’t the End of the Road
The most common reason families in the Town of Happy don’t call an attorney is the waiver they signed at the front desk. The park’s insurance adjuster will tell you the case is closed because you “assumed the risk.” They are wrong.
In Texas, the waiver is not an automatic shield. We attack these documents on five distinct fronts:
- The Gross Negligence Carve-Out: In the landmark Cosmic Jump case in Harris County, a jury awarded $11.485 million—including $6 million in punitive damages—to a teenager who fell through a torn mat onto concrete. Even though a waiver was signed, the jury found gross negligence. Texas courts generally refuse to enforce waivers for conduct that shows a “conscious indifference” to safety.
- The Munoz Minor-Waiver Rule: Since at least 1993, in Munoz v. II Jaz Inc., Texas courts have held that a parent cannot bind a minor child to a pre-injury waiver of the child’s own personal injury claim. While you might have waived your right to sue for your own scraped knee, your child’s right to recover for a catastrophic injury remains intact.
- The Dresser Fair Notice Doctrine: A waiver in Texas must be “conspicuous.” If the release language was buried in a twenty-page clickwrap agreement or wasn’t set apart in bold or contrasting text, it fails the fair notice doctrine established in Dresser Industries v. Page Petroleum.
- Signer Authority (Texas Family Code § 153.073): Was the waiver signed by a grandmother, an aunt, or a family friend at a Town of Happy birthday party? Under Texas law, only a legal guardian or conservator has the authority to sign for a child. A non-guardian signature makes the waiver a legal nullity.
- Bilingual Formation (Delfingen Doctrine): If your family’s primary language is Spanish and you were pressured to sign an English-only iPad waiver at an Urban Air or Altitude park, the contract may not have been validly formed. Our associate Lupe Peña is fluent in Spanish and represents our clients directly—ensuring that language barriers aren’t used as defense weapons.
Think a signed waiver means you can’t sue? Think again. We have spent decades dismantling these documents. We know which arguments win in Texas courtrooms.
The Evidence Clock: What Must Be Preserved in the Next 48 Hours
The moment your child is hurt at an Urban Air or independent park near the Town of Happy, the park enters “risk management” mode. Their goal is to protect the corporation. Ours is to protect your family.
You need a lawyer who doesn’t wait for “discovery.” Our spoliation letter goes out via certified mail and email within 24 hours of retention. We demand the preservation of:
- Surveillance DVR Hard Drives: These systems typically overwrite every 7 to 30 days. If the “glitch” that happened in the Mathew Knight case (where 4 cameras simultaneously failed at the moment of injury) happens in your case, we need to bring in digital forensics immediately.
- Incident Report Metadata: The “final” incident report you see is often different from the one the attendant typed at 4 PM. We subpoena the version history to see what was “revised” after the park’s risk manager looked at it.
- Waiver Kiosk Logs: These databases can purge in as little as 72 hours. We need to capture the exact version of the screen as your husband or wife saw it.
- Attendant Training Records: We want to know if the 17-year-old monitor watching the court had completed their 8 hours of training or if they were “shadowing” on their first shift.
By day 10, the Saturday of your child’s injury is often gone from the record unless a lawyer stops the overwrite. Don’t let them hide the truth. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 now.
Pediatric Biology: Why “Broken Bones” Are Different for Town of Happy Children
Children’s bones are not just small versions of adult bones. This is a medical fact that insurance adjusters choose to ignore.
The Salter-Harris Growth Plate Catastrophe
Growth plates (physes) are the areas of developing cartilage at the ends of long bones. They are the weakest part of a child’s skeleton. A trampoline injury to a child from the Town of Happy often results in a Salter-Harris Type II fracture.
The problem is that the damage doesn’t always show up on the initial X-ray. A child might have a “healed” leg, but at age 14, one leg is measurably shorter than the other because the growth plate was destroyed years earlier. That is not just a medical bill; that is a decade of monitoring, potential corrective surgeries, and a lifetime of biomechanical issues.
SCIWORA: The Spinal Cord Mystery
Spinal Cord Injury Without Radiographic Abnormality (SCIWORA) is a pediatric phenomenon. A child lands head-first in a foam pit at an Amarillo park. They have neck pain. The CT scan is normal. The ER sends them home.
In reality, the child’s flexible ligaments allowed the spine to stretch and injure the delicate spinal cord before snapping back. Hours later, the child loses feeling in their legs. Because the injuries are unique to pediatric biology, we retain specialized pediatric orthopedic surgeons and neurologists to testify. We don’t just ask for what you’ve paid—we use life-care planners to calculate what the next 70 years of your child’s life will cost.
Backyard Trampoline Liability and Product Defects in Swisher County
For families in the Town of Happy, the hazard often isn’t at a park—it’s in the backyard or the neighbor’s yard. Backyard trampolines (Jumpking, Skywalker, JumpSport) are America’s most-warned-against recreational product.
Attractive Nuisance: The Trespasser Rule
Texas law recognizes the “attractive nuisance” doctrine. If your neighbor in the Town of Happy has a trampoline that is unfenced or has a ladder left in place, and your child wanders over and gets hurt, the homeowner may be liable even if your child wasn’t “invited.” The law recognizes that a trampoline is an unreasonable risk that children are too young to understand.
Manufacturing Defects and Recalls
Many backyard injuries are caused by product failures. In 2005, over 1 million Jumpking units were recalled because frame welds could break during use. In 2012 and 2013, over 120,000 BouncePro units (sold at Walmart) were recalled because the netting was failing.
If a net tore or a spring snapped on your Town of Happy backyard trampoline, we don’t just look at the homeowner. We look at the manufacturer (Jumpking, Skywalker) and the retailer (Walmart, Amazon). Under the Bolger v. Amazon doctrine, we are increasingly able to hold large retailers accountable as “sellers” even when the manufacturer is a nameless company offshore.
Frequently Asked Questions for Town of Happy Families
Is it really possible to sue if we signed the waiver?
Yes. In Texas, parental pre-injury waivers are largely unenforceable under Munoz v. II Jaz. Furthermore, no waiver in any state protects a park from “gross negligence.” The Cosmic Jump $11.485 million verdict proves that when we show the park knew about a danger and did nothing, the waiver disappears.
What is my child’s case worth?
There is no “average” settlement. A Salter-Harris growth plate fracture at age eight carries a different damages calculation than a concussion. However, national industry data for catastrophic pediatric injuries shows settlements and verdicts ranging from $500,000 for severe fractures up to $15 million or more for permanent spinal cord injuries. We build the case to reach the deepest pocket—not just the local operator LLC’s $1M primary policy, but the franchisor’s additional-insured umbrella and the corporate parent’s excess layers.
The park manager said it was a “freak accident.” Is he right?
The industry wants you to believe it was “bad luck.” We look at the data. Teague’s 2024 Pediatrics study showed foam-pit injury rates of 1.91 per 1,000 jumper-hours. That isn’t luck—that’s a statistical probability. We don’t accept their excuses; we look at their inspection logs and training manuals to find the breach.
How long do we have to file?
In Texas, the personal injury statute of limitations is generally two years. For a minor child, that clock is “tolled” (paused) until they turn eighteen, giving them until age twenty to file. BUT—the evidence deadline is much tighter. Surveillance video overwrites in as little as 7-30 days. Witnesses from a Town of Happy birthday party move away. The case is often won or lost based on what happens in the first month.
Will I have to go to court?
Most cases resolve in settlement or through arbitration. However, after the 2023 Damion Collins $15.6M arbitration award, we know that arbitration is not a “safe harbor” for the park. If the franchisor (UATP Management) is on the hook for 40% of the award, they are highly motivated to settle fairly once they see our expert reports.
Damion Collins and the Urban Air Overland Park Precedent
When we talk about deep-pocket accountability, we aren’t just making a claim—we are citing history. On September 14, 2023, an arbitrator in Kansas awarded $15.6 million to Damion Collins, who was paralyzed on a “Wipe-Out” attraction at an Urban Air park.
The arbitrator, Thomas Bender, wrote that there was a “SYSTEMIC FAILURE to bring necessary information to the patron.” He also ruled that the signed waiver was NOT legally enforceable. Most importantly for those in the Town of Happy, the franchisor (UATP Management LLC) was found 40% liable.
The park’s defense was the same one they would use at a park near the Town of Happy: “we just license the brand.” The arbitrator saw through it. We do too. Whether it’s Sky Zone, Inc. (renamed from CircusTrix in Jan 2023 and backed by Palladium Equity Partners) or Unleashed Brands (parent of Urban Air, acquired by Seidler Equity Partners in Feb 2023), these corporate giants cannot hide behind a franchise contract when their safety systems fail.
Why You Don’t Need an Attorney in Swisher County—You Need a National Practice
We are based in Texas, but our knowledge of trampoline injury law covers every jurisdiction. Whether your child was hurt in Dallas, Denver, or Detroit, our 50-state database of waiver enforceability and statute of limitations sits on every attorney’s desk.
We operate on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing unless we win. Our firm advances all the upfront costs of investigation—the biomechanical engineer who will model the double-bounce, the digital forensic expert who will image the DVR, and the pediatric life-care planner who will project your child’s needs for the next sixty years.
As client Donald Wilcox said, “One company said they would not accept my case. Then I got a call from Manginello… I got a call to come pick up this handsome check.” Other firms turn down trampoline cases because they are afraid of the waiver. One of our attorneys used to write those waivers. We aren’t afraid of them.
Hablamos Español: Lupe Peña habla con usted directamente
Muchas de las víctimas de estos accidentes son niños de familias que se sienten más cómodas hablando español. En la mayoría de los bufetes, usted hablará con un intérprete. En Attorney911, usted habla directamente con Lupe Peña.
Bajo la doctrina de Delfingen US-Texas v. Valenzuela, su estatus como hablante nativo de español es una pieza clave para invalidar un waiver en inglés. Si no le dieron una traducción al español en el kiosco del parque de trampolines, su firma puede no ser válida. Llámenos hoy mismo al 1-888-ATTY-911. Sin intérpretes, sin retrasos.
Your Child’s Case and the Path Forward
What happened to your child at an Urban Air, Sky Zone, or a backyard Jumpking in the Town of Happy wasn’t an accident—it was the predictable output of a system. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning since 1999. The industry-authored ASTM F2970 standard was established to create a safety floor that parks routinely fall through to hit their margin targets. The waiver at the kiosk was drafted by corporate counsel who knew it wouldn’t hold in most states but counted on you not knowing that.
Attorney911 was built for exactly this fight. Ralph Manginello brings 25+ years of catastrophic injury experience and federal-court admission. Lupe Peña used to defend insurance companies and recreational facilities from the inside—he knows which arguments they deploy and how to dismantle them. Our currently active $10 million UH rhabdomyolysis case gives us the medical litigation depth that generalist firms simply don’t have.
The Evidence Won’t Wait
Your child’s case depends on what gets preserved this week. By day 10, the surveillance DVR will overwrite. By day 30, the incident report will be sanitized. By day 60, the attendant who saw the adult double-bounce your daughter may have transferred or quit.
Don’t let them close the file with a small check and a shrug. Whether you are in the Town of Happy or anywhere else in Swisher County, your child deserves a firm that treats your family like our own.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Hablamos Español. Zero upfront costs. No fee unless we win. Our spoliation letter is already drafted and is ready to be sent to the park’s general counsel.
Wait another week, and the video is gone. Call now.
