Texas Trampoline Accident Lawyer

Why Texas Law Decides Your Trampoline Injury Claim

State law, not federal law, decides most trampoline injury cases, and Texas sets its own rules in the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. That code supplies the filing deadlines, the fault rule, the wrongful-death rules and the damages limits described on this page. Other states write these rules differently, which is why a page on California trampoline injury law reads nothing like this one.

Four legal theories tend to come up. Premises liability is the duty a person or business that controls property may owe to people on it, such as a park operator or a homeowner. Negligent supervision is a claim that someone responsible for watching jumpers, often staff or an adult in charge, failed to use reasonable care in doing so. Product liability covers harm said to be caused by a defective product, such as a trampoline, a spring, a net or a pad. Comparative fault, which Texas calls proportionate responsibility, is the rule for dividing responsibility among everyone involved, including the injured person.

For someone injured in Texas, this means the rules that apply are Texas rules, even if the park chain or the equipment maker is based elsewhere. Which theory fits depends on where the accident happened, who controlled the equipment and the space, and what went wrong, and those same facts decide which deadline and which limits apply.

Where Your Trampoline Accident Happened: Parks, Backyards and Other Settings

The setting of the accident shapes almost everything that follows. A commercial trampoline park is a business that invites paying customers onto its premises, and a premises-liability claim there asks whether the operator owed a duty to the jumper, breached it, and caused the injury. Whether those elements are met depends on the facts, not on the injury itself.

A backyard trampoline raises different questions. A homeowner may owe a duty to guests, and chapter 75 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, titled Limitation of Landowners' Liability, limits the liability of landowners in certain recreational settings. In practical terms, where that chapter applies, an owner who gives someone permission to use the property does not owe that person more care than the owner would owe a trespasser. The chapter also states, in section 75.003, that it "does not relieve any owner, lessee, or occupant of real property of any liability that would otherwise exist for deliberate, wilful, or malicious injury to a person or to property." Whether chapter 75 reaches a particular backyard depends on its full terms and the facts.

When equipment fails, chapter 82 may come into play. That chapter defines a products liability action as an action "against a manufacturer or seller for recovery of damages arising out of personal injury, death, or property damage allegedly caused by a defective product." A failure alone does not prove a defect. Supervision failures are a separate theory, focused on what the people watching the jumpers did or did not do. If a governmental unit runs the facility, the Texas Tort Claims Act adds its own notice and liability rules, covered below.

What is at stake for an injured person is which set of rules governs the claim: a backyard accident may face the chapter 75 limits, while a park or equipment claim may not. Sorting this out usually starts with who owned, ran and supplied the place and the equipment.

Who May Be Responsible for a Trampoline Injury in Texas

Several kinds of parties can be involved, and each one is judged under different rules. A park or facility operator may owe duties as the party in control of the premises. A homeowner may owe duties to guests, subject to chapter 75 where it applies.

An equipment manufacturer may face a products liability action under chapter 82. Under section 82.005, when a claimant alleges a design defect, "the burden is on the claimant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence" the matters that section lists. A separate time limit, a statute of repose, also applies to manufacturers and sellers; it is set out with the other deadlines below.

A seller that did not make the product is treated differently. Section 82.003 states that "a seller that did not manufacture a product is not liable for harm caused to the claimant by that product unless the claimant proves" one of the circumstances that section lists. For a family that bought a trampoline from a store, this matters because the store counts as a seller under chapter 82 only if it is "engaged in the business of distributing or otherwise placing, for any commercial purpose, in the stream of commerce" a product or a component part, and even then it faces liability only in the circumstances section 82.003 lists.

A governmental unit, such as a city, may be responsible only within the framework of the Texas Tort Claims Act.

For an injured person, the practical stake is that each possible party brings its own burdens and limits, so naming the wrong one, or missing one, can shape the whole claim. The records that often help identify the relevant parties include incident reports, the receipt or purchase records for the trampoline, maintenance logs, and photos and video of the equipment and the area.

What a Release Agreement Does and Does Not Decide Under Texas Law

Trampoline parks often ask patrons, or a parent for a child, to sign a release agreement, sometimes called a participation agreement, before jumping. A release is a document in which the signer agrees to give up certain claims or to handle disputes in a particular way. What a given release covers depends on its words and the facts around it.

The Supreme Court of Texas addressed one such document in an opinion delivered May 23, 2025, in No. 24-0273, a case about a trampoline park's release agreement. A mother signed the release for herself and her child on a first visit. The release's arbitration clause stated that any dispute over "the scope, arbitrability, or validity of this arbitration agreement" would be "settled by binding arbitration before a single arbitrator." The question was whether the release also reached a later visit. The Court treated that as a question of the agreement's scope and held that, because the parties had delegated scope questions to an arbitrator, an arbitrator rather than a court decides it. The Court affirmed and remanded the case to the trial court to issue an order compelling arbitration.

The Court expressed no opinion on whether the release covered the later visit, and it decided nothing about the release of liability, the injury claim's merit or any operator's fault. More on releases at specific parks appears on the pages for Urban Air park injury claims and Sky Zone injury law.

If you signed a release, or signed one for your child, its exact wording is often the first thing that matters, because it may decide where a dispute is heard. An attorney can review the document's exact wording, including any arbitration clause, and explain how Texas courts have interpreted similar provisions.

Filing Deadlines and the Rules That Can Shorten or Extend Them in Texas

A statute of limitations is the deadline for filing a lawsuit. Under section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, except as provided by sections 16.010, 16.0031 and 16.0045, a person must bring suit for personal injury "not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues." For an injury resulting in death, the same section sets two years and states that "the cause of action accrues on the death of the injured person."

For children, section 16.001 provides that "if a person entitled to bring a personal action is under a legal disability when the cause of action accrues, the time of the disability is not included in a limitations period," and it treats a person as under a legal disability if the person is "younger than 18 years of age, regardless of whether the person is married."

Product claims carry an outer limit. Section 16.012 states that, except as provided by subsections (c), (d) and (d-1), "a claimant must commence a products liability action against a manufacturer or seller of a product before the end of 15 years after the date of the sale of the product by the defendant." Under subsection (c), if a manufacturer or seller expressly warrants in writing a useful safe life longer than 15 years, the period runs for the number of years warranted.

Claims against government come with an earlier step. Section 101.101 of the Texas Tort Claims Act states that a governmental unit "is entitled to receive notice of a claim against it under this chapter not later than six months after the day that the incident giving rise to the claim occurred," and the notice must reasonably describe the matters that section lists. That notice rule is separate from the two-year filing period.

Because more than one of these periods can apply to the same accident, which one governs depends on who may be responsible and what happened. If you want to talk through which Texas deadlines may apply to an accident like yours, you can request a case evaluation.

If You Share Some of the Blame: How Texas Proportionate Responsibility Works

Section 33.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code states the core rule: "a claimant may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent." Chapter 33 defines a percentage of responsibility as the share, in whole numbers, that the trier of fact assigns to each claimant, defendant, settling person or responsible third party for causing or contributing to the harm, whether by a negligent act, a defective product or other conduct.

If the injured person is not barred, section 33.012 requires the court to "reduce the amount of damages to be recovered by the claimant" by "a percentage equal to the claimant's percentage of responsibility." In plain terms, a person found more than half responsible recovers nothing, and a person found less responsible has any damages reduced by their share.

For someone hurt on a trampoline, this means their own conduct at the time may be weighed alongside the conduct of others: whether posted rules were followed, the jumper's age, and what supervision was in place. None of these facts settles fault by itself; the rule asks a fact-finder to compare everyone's role.

Damages also carry one cap in the supplied Texas text. Exemplary damages, which are damages meant to punish rather than to repay a loss, are capped by section 41.008 at the greater of two times the economic damages plus an amount equal to any noneconomic damages found by the jury, not to exceed $750,000, or $200,000. No general cap on compensatory damages is stated here.

Wrongful Death After a Trampoline Accident in Texas

A wrongful death action is a claim brought by family members when a death is caused by another's wrongful conduct. For a grieving family, section 71.004 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code answers who may act: the claim is "for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased," and any of those relatives may file it, either together or with one or more filing on behalf of all. If none of them has begun the action "within three calendar months after the death of the injured individual," the executor or administrator "shall bring and prosecute the action unless requested not to by all those individuals."

The two-year period in section 16.003 for an injury resulting in death runs from the death itself. Separately, section 71.021 provides that a personal injury claim "does not abate because of the death of the injured person."

The legal theories are the same ones described above, applied to a fatal outcome, each subject to the same proportionate-responsibility rule. What damages the law may allow depends on the claim, the family members involved and the facts. For a family in the weeks after a loss, the practical questions are often who among them will bring the claim and which deadlines apply.

Evidence That Often Matters in a Texas Trampoline Injury Case

Each Texas rule on this page turns on facts, and the facts usually live in records. Medical records documenting the injury and treatment bear on what harm occurred and how.

Photos and video of the scene, the equipment's condition and any posted rules can bear on how responsibility is divided under section 33.001. Incident reports filed with the facility record what was noted at the time. The trampoline or the equipment itself, along with purchase records and maintenance records, can bear on whether a product was defective under chapter 82 and when it was sold, which matters for section 16.012.

Witnesses' names and contact details help reconstruct what happened. Any release or participation agreement signed at the facility shows what terms, including any arbitration clause, may be in play. Where a governmental unit is involved, records of when and how the incident was reported bear on the notice rule in section 101.101.

What is at stake is that these records are often how fault, defect and timing get shown, so their loss can make each rule harder to apply in an injured person's favor. Injured people and families often gather these items gradually, alongside medical care, and an attorney can help sort out which records bear on which rule.