Trampoline Park Regulations: What the Law Requires and What It Means If You Were Hurt

What Trampoline Park Regulations Actually Cover

The rules that touch a trampoline park come from several places at once, and they are not all the same kind of rule. That difference is the starting point for understanding what a park was required to do.

A voluntary standard is a set of practices an industry writes and agrees on for itself. A mandatory regulation is a rule a government enacts, with consequences if it is broken. ASTM F2970, the standard ASTM International publishes for trampoline courts, is a voluntary consensus standard. It is not a federal regulation. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, known as IAAPA, is an industry association that references ASTM standards; it is not a government agency.

The federal government's role runs through product-safety law. Under 15 U.S.C. § 2064, every manufacturer, distributor and retailer of a consumer product who obtains information that reasonably supports the conclusion that the product fails to comply with an applicable consumer product safety rule or with a voluntary consumer product safety standard the Commission has relied on, fails to comply with any other rule, regulation, standard or ban the Commission enforces, contains a defect that could create a substantial product hazard, or creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death, must "immediately inform the Commission," meaning the Consumer Product Safety Commission, unless it has actual knowledge the Commission has already been adequately informed. Where the Commission determines, after an opportunity for a hearing, that a product presents a substantial product hazard, it may order steps including public notice, repair, replacement or a refund. That law speaks to products, such as trampoline beds, springs and frames, rather than to how a park staffs its courts.

Why does the line between voluntary and mandatory matter to someone who was hurt? Because a claim often asks what a reasonable park would have done. Whether a court treats a park's failure to meet ASTM F2970 as evidence of that duty of care is a legal question each state answers for itself, not a settled conclusion.

State Amusement-Ride and Attraction Laws: Where Mandatory Rules Come From

Binding rules for how a trampoline park operates generally come from state law, not federal law. There is no single national rule, and trampoline park laws differ from one state to the next.

Much depends on classification. Some states have amusement-ride or attraction safety laws, and whether a trampoline park falls inside one of those laws can decide whether a state inspection regime applies at all. Some states have also passed legislation aimed at trampoline parks specifically. A park that counts as an "amusement ride" or "amusement attraction" under one state's law may be outside any comparable law next door. In one state a park may be subject to inspections and permits, while in another the state's ride law may not reach it.

Where a state law does apply, it may include things like inspections, operator permits, posted safety rules or a duty to report incidents to a state agency. The details, including which agency, how often and what must be reported, come only from that state's own statute and rules.

For someone hurt at a park, this can change the picture. A park that was operating without a permit its state required, or that had not passed an inspection its state required, may stand in a different legal position than one that met every requirement. A park that met every requirement may still face questions about what happened on the day of the injury. Whether compliance or noncompliance matters to a particular claim depends on the facts and on that state's law. Where a state requires incident reporting, those reports can become a record of what the park itself said happened, close to the time it happened.

What a Waiver or Release Does — and Does Not — Decide

A waiver or release is a contract a park asks guests to sign before they jump, in which the guest agrees not to sue the park over injuries. Parks also call it a participation agreement; the type of document is the same. Some versions also contain an arbitration clause, which sends disputes to a private decision-maker instead of a court. Our page on trampoline park waivers and claims goes into that document in more depth.

Signing one does not, by itself, settle whether a claim can go forward. Whether a waiver is enforced is a question for the law of the state where the injury happened, using that state's contract rules and its public policy. Questions that commonly come up include:

• whether the document's language was clear;
• whether it covered the kind of injury that actually occurred;
• whether the state's public policy limits what a release can cover, for example conduct more serious than ordinary carelessness, such as gross negligence or willful misconduct.

The same document can be treated differently in two states.

Waivers signed for children raise their own question: whether a parent can give up a child's right to bring a claim. State courts are divided, and the answer turns on the state and on the document's exact words. For a parent reading the agreement after a child's injury, the useful questions are which state's law governs, what the document actually says, and how that state's courts have treated parental signatures.

How Premises Liability and Negligent Supervision Apply to Trampoline Park Injuries

Premises liability is the legal duty a property owner or operator owes to people who come onto its property. At a trampoline park, that can mean questions about a torn mat, a missing pad over a spring or frame, or an overcrowded court the park knew about, or should have known about, and did not fix or warn guests about.

Negligent supervision is a related theory. It asks whether a park failed to provide adequate staff oversight, for example where court monitors did not enforce posted rules or did not step in when larger and smaller jumpers shared a court.

For someone who was hurt, the question underneath either theory is whether what went wrong on the court was the park's responsibility. The law breaks that question into four parts:

• Duty: did the park owe the jumper reasonable care?
• Breach: did the park fall short of that care?
• Causation: did that shortfall actually lead to the injury?
• Damages: what harm resulted, such as medical expenses, lost earnings and pain and suffering, as the state's law allows?

Whether each part is met depends on the facts; an injury on its own does not prove anyone's fault.

This is where the rules from the earlier sections come back in. Inspection records, incident reports and permit status can be relevant evidence on breach. A failed inspection, or a gap between the park's practices and ASTM F2970, may carry weight in one state and less in another. Equipment raises a separate question. Under 16 C.F.R. § 1115.4, the Commission's rules describe a defect as "a fault, flaw, or irregularity that causes weakness, failure, or inadequacy in form or function." A defect may be the result of a manufacturing or production error, or of a product's design or materials, and can also occur in a product's contents, construction, finish, packaging, warnings or instructions. That definition shapes what product makers must report. It does not decide whether a particular piece of equipment caused a particular injury.

The injured person's own conduct can matter too. Comparative fault is a rule that weighs the injured person's share of responsibility, for example ignoring a posted rule, against the defendant's. Comparative fault rules differ by state. A broader overview appears in our guide to a trampoline park injury claim.

Why the Rules Differ Depending on Where You Were Hurt

The deadline question is often the one that keeps people up at night, and it is a state-law question. A statute of limitations is the time limit for filing a lawsuit. For a personal-injury claim, the state where the injury happened sets it, not federal law. Each state's statute also says when that period begins to run and what exceptions apply. A claim filed after the period ends can be barred.

Several rules shift from state to state:

• the length of the limitation period and when it starts;
• whether the clock is paused, or "tolled," for an injured child until the child reaches adulthood. Some states pause it; others treat it differently;
• whether a claim against a government-owned facility, such as a city-run recreation center, carries its own shorter deadline or notice requirement in that state;
• fault rules, damages rules and wrongful-death rules.

A wrongful-death claim is a claim a family, or the deceased person's estate, may bring when someone dies because of another's wrongful conduct. Who may bring it, what it may include and its deadline all come from the state's own wrongful-death law.

Because these rules vary this much, the same injury can raise very different timing questions in two states. Understanding which state's deadline applies, and when it began to run, is something a conversation with our attorney can help sort out.

Records That Often Matter in a Trampoline Park Injury Case

After an injury, much of what can be shown about the park, the court and the agreement lives in documents and footage, some held by the injured person and some held by others. The records that usually bear on the legal questions fall into a few groups:

• the park's incident report, its own account made close to the time of the injury, and any report filed with a state agency where that state's law requires one;
• inspection and permit records, which speak to whether the park was operating in line with the state law that applied to it;
• the specific participation agreement signed at entry, because its exact words shape every argument about enforceability;
• medical records, which bear on damages;
• photographs and video, including the facility's own surveillance footage, which bear on breach and causation;
• names and contact information of witnesses, including other guests and staff.

Some of these, like medical records and personal photos, are within an injured person's reach. Others sit with the park or a state agency. Records a park holds may have to be obtained through formal legal process, such as discovery in a lawsuit. Records filed with a state agency may be available as public records where that state's law allows it.

Where a piece of equipment is part of the story, the equipment itself and any recall notice issued under the federal law above can also matter. A recall is not a finding that a product injured anyone; it is one record among several. Families who want to see how these questions play out at named parks can read our pages on Altitude Trampoline Park injuries and on a trampoline park lawsuit.