Louisiana Trampoline Accident Lawyer

How Louisiana Law Approaches Your Trampoline Injury

Louisiana is a civil-law state, so its injury rules come from a written Civil Code rather than from the judge-made common law used in most of the country. An injury claim is called a delictual action, the civil-law term for what other states call a tort. The deadline for bringing one is called prescription, the period after which the right to sue is lost.

Whatever the label, a trampoline injury claim generally asks four questions. Did someone owe the injured person a duty of care? Did they breach that duty? Did the breach cause the injury? What damages resulted? An injury, however serious, does not prove that anyone was at fault, so the facts of the accident decide each element.

Three theories come up most often. If the problem was the place itself, the question is premises liability, the duty a property owner or occupier may owe to people who come onto the property. If the problem was how jumpers were watched, the question is negligent supervision, a claim that staff or a court monitor failed to use reasonable care. If the problem was the equipment, the question is product liability, a claim that a trampoline or one of its parts was defective and caused the injury. One accident can involve more than one theory, and sorting out which ones fit is part of what a conversation with an attorney can cover.

Where You Were Hurt and Why It Matters

The setting of an accident shapes which Louisiana rules come into play.

The first setting is a commercial trampoline park. Injuries there tend to involve collisions between jumpers, falls onto padding or frames, and foam pit landings. The main theories are usually premises liability and negligent supervision, raising questions about how the courts were arranged and maintained, how many people jumped at once and how staff watched them. Our page on trampoline park injury claims covers these theories in more depth, and foam pit injuries have their own page.

The second is a backyard trampoline on private property. Here the question is what duty the homeowner owed a visitor. A Louisiana statute on recreational use of land can limit that duty in some situations, with exceptions covered below.

The third is defective equipment, such as a frame, spring, net or enclosure that failed. A broken part does not by itself establish a defect or causation. Louisiana has its own product-liability law, the Louisiana Products Liability Act, which article 3493.1 refers to by name.

Many trampoline parks ask jumpers or parents to sign a waiver or release, a document giving up certain claims before taking part. If you or your child signed one, its effect depends on its wording, on who signed it and on Louisiana law as the courts apply it. Our page on trampoline park waivers explains what these documents can contain.

Who May Be Responsible for Your Injury

A Louisiana trampoline case may involve one defendant or several, and each may owe a different duty.

A commercial trampoline park operator may be asked about the condition of the courts and padding, the rules the park set and how its staff carried them out. A private property owner may be asked about the condition of a backyard trampoline and the visitor's status, which the recreational-use statute below can affect. A manufacturer or seller may face a product liability claim if a defect is alleged to have caused the injury. A maintenance or installation company may be asked whether its work on springs, nets, anchors or padding met the standard of reasonable care.

Louisiana's comparative fault article, covered in the next section, requires fault to be divided among everyone whose conduct contributed to an injury, including people who are not parties to the lawsuit. In practice, leaving out a responsible party can affect how fault is counted.

The material that usually helps identify responsible parties includes the park's or homeowner's name, the trampoline's brand and model, any incident report, photos of the equipment and the scene, and the names of anyone who saw what happened.

When a Trampoline Injury Family Faces Prescription, Comparative Fault, and Damages Questions

Article 3493.1 of the Louisiana Civil Code, effective July 1, 2024, provides:

"Delictual actions are subject to a liberative prescription of two years. This prescription commences to run from the day that injury or damage is sustained. It does not run against minors or interdicts in actions involving permanent disability and brought pursuant to the Louisiana Products Liability Act or state law governing product liability actions in effect at the time of the injury or damage."

In plain terms, the clock starts on the day of the injury, not on the day a family decides to look into a claim. The exception is narrow. Prescription does not run against minors or interdicts (people placed under a court's protection) only in actions that involve permanent disability and are brought under the Louisiana Products Liability Act or the product liability law in effect at the time of the injury. A parent of an injured child cannot assume the exception applies to a park or backyard claim, because the article does not extend it to other claims. Since the right to sue is lost when prescription runs out, the date of the injury is often the first fact a family pins down.

Article 2323 of the Louisiana Civil Code, in its version effective January 1, 2026, sets out comparative fault. Fault is assigned to everyone who contributed, whether or not that person is a party, immune or able to pay. Beyond the fifty-one percent bar, an injured person's share below that point reduces damages in proportion. The article applies to any claim for injury, death or loss, whatever the theory. A claim is not reduced for the injured person's own negligence where the other party's fault was intentional.

What this means for a jumper is that their own conduct, such as a flip or a double bounce, can become part of the weighing, and the result can range from a reduced recovery to none at all. That is why the sequence of the accident, and what others were doing at the same moment, tends to matter as much as the injury itself.

On damages, the articles cited here speak of "damages" for "injury, death, or loss." What the law may allow depends on the injury, the proof and how fault is divided. A conversation with our attorney can go through the dates, the setting and the sequence of the accident.

When a Backyard or Park Injury Raises the Recreational-Use Statute: What It Does and Does Not Cover

Section 2795 of title 9 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes limits the liability of landowners who let people use their land for recreational purposes, with or without charge. "Land" in the statute includes buildings, structures, and machinery or equipment when attached to the realty. Where the statute covers an owner, that owner does not extend any assurance that the premises are safe, does not give the user the legal status of an invitee or licensee to whom a duty of care is owed, and does not incur liability for injury caused by a defect in the land, whether natural or man-made.

For someone hurt on another person's property, this can change the starting point of a claim: if the statute applies, the usual duty a homeowner owes a visitor may not be there.

Two limits sit inside that rule. The protection does not apply to a willful or malicious failure to warn against a dangerous condition, use, structure or activity. It also excludes owners of commercial recreational developments or facilities, who are covered only for injuries from the commercial activity that occur on land they do not control, outside the development itself. The statute also keeps the recreational user's own duty to use care.

For a public park owned by the state or one of its political subdivisions, the limitation does not apply to playground equipment or stands that are defective, or to intentional or grossly negligent acts by a public employee.

For a backyard injury, whether the trampoline counts as equipment attached to the realty, and whether the use was recreational, depends on the facts. A commercial trampoline park is the kind of business the exclusion addresses, though whether a given facility fits is a factual question. How the trampoline was set up, who owned it and whether a warning was given are among the details a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.

What Records May Help Show What Happened

Each element of a claim needs proof, and each kind of record proves something different.

Medical records document the injury, diagnosis and treatment, connect the accident to the harm and bear on damages. With fractures, spinal injuries and trampoline head injuries, these records often build up over months.

Photos and video of the scene, the equipment and the visible injuries show conditions as they were, including park camera footage where it exists.

An incident or accident report from the park records who was there, when the accident happened and what staff noted at the time. It records what someone wrote down, not what caused the injury.

The trampoline or its parts, along with the receipt, order history and any manuals, bear on a product liability question about a defect and causation.

Witness names and contact details, including other jumpers, parents and staff, can matter for supervision and comparative fault.

Any participation agreement or release signed at the time also tends to matter, including who signed it and for whom.

Families gathering these materials are often doing so while caring for someone at home. A conversation with our attorney can cover which of these records exist and what each one shows.

Wrongful Death and Survival Actions After a Fatal Trampoline Accident

When a trampoline accident ends in a death, Louisiana law provides two separate claims for different losses.

A wrongful death action is the family's claim for the damages they themselves sustained because of the death. Under article 2315.2 of the Louisiana Civil Code, the people who may bring it are listed in ranked order:

1. The surviving spouse and children, or either of them.
2. The surviving father and mother, if there is no spouse or child.
3. The surviving brothers and sisters, if there is no spouse, child or parent.
4. The surviving grandparents, if there is no spouse, child, parent or sibling.

The terms include relatives by adoption and children or siblings given in adoption. A parent who abandoned the deceased during the deceased's minority is treated as not having survived. The right of action prescribes one year from the death or two years from the day the injury or damage was sustained, whichever is longer. For medical malpractice actions, it prescribes one year from the death. The right can be inherited, but inheriting it does not interrupt or extend that period.

A survival action carries forward the claim the injured person had before dying. Under article 2315.1 of the Louisiana Civil Code, the right to recover all damages for injury to that person, his property or otherwise survives in favor of the same ranked classes, for the same one-year-from-death or two-years-from-injury period, whichever is longer. If no listed beneficiary exists, the deceased's succession representative may bring it.

For a grieving family, the difference is real. One claim looks at what the family lost. The other looks at what the person who died endured before the death.