Parent Signed a Waiver — What That Means When a Child Is Injured

What a Parental Pre-Injury Release Is — and What It Tries to Do

A pre-injury release, often called a liability waiver, is a contract signed before an activity that tries to give up the right to sue the business if someone is hurt. At a trampoline park, a parent usually signs it for a child who wants to jump.

Two different sets of rights can sit inside that one document. A parent may have claims of their own, such as for a child's medical bills. The child has separate claims that belong to the child. Whether a parent's signature reaches the parent's rights, the child's rights, both or neither are legally separate questions. For a parent, this means the waiver may not affect your claims and your child's claims in the same way.

Minors have limited power to make binding contracts. West Virginia's highest court, for example, applied its state rule that contracts by minors "are generally not void, but voidable only, and may be ratified or disaffirmed after majority," as its memorandum decision quotes it. That is West Virginia's statement of the rule, and other states set their own.

When a parent signs on a child's behalf, the question becomes whether a parent has authority to give up rights that belong to the child. State law governs, and states differ. If you signed for your child, two practical questions come first: in which state the park sits, and what the document you signed actually says.

If You Signed for Your Child: Why Courts Divide on Whether a Parent Can Sign Away a Child's Right to Sue

As a parent, you make decisions for your child every day, and the law respects that. Your child also holds legal rights of their own, and states have long claimed a role in protecting minors. That protective role is often called parens patriae, a Latin phrase meaning the state acts as a guardian for people who cannot fully protect themselves.

When a court asks whether a parent can waive a child's right to sue, it weighs those ideas against each other. Some state courts lean toward protecting the child's independent rights. Others give more weight to a parent's choices and to the business's interest in offering the activity. Where a state lands can depend on its court decisions, its public policy and, in some states, its statutes.

For a family, the answer to "can a parent waive a child's right to sue" is not a single yes or no. It turns on which state's courts have addressed the question and how.

Most trampoline park agreements also contain a second issue: a release of liability and an arbitration clause, a term sending disputes to a private decision-maker instead of a court. Courts often decide one without deciding the other. The Pennsylvania court discussed below said the issue it accepted "concerns the enforceability of the arbitration provision only," leaving the release arguments "outside of the scope of this appeal." A parent reviewing the agreement may find it useful to note which part, the release or the arbitration clause, a park is relying on.

What Recent Court Decisions Mean for Your Child's Claim — and What They Left Open

Six state appellate courts have recently addressed trampoline park agreements. Each applied its own state's law. None is a federal case, and none decided whether any park caused an injury or was at fault. For a family, the result in one of these states says little about a park in another.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in Nos. 24 EAP 2023 and 25 EAP 2023, decided September 25, 2025, considered a participation agreement one parent signed for a minor at a trampoline park. It held the arbitration provision was not enforceable against the injured minor or the parent who did not sign, finding that "parents are without authority to bind a minor child to an agreement to arbitrate." It decided the arbitration provision only, not the release of liability. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part. This is Pennsylvania law. For a Pennsylvania family, this means a parent's signature did not send the child's claim to arbitration, while the release question stayed open.

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, in memorandum decision No. 20-0344, filed February 19, 2021, addressed a release the park requires a parent or guardian to sign for a minor, where the record did not show the release on file was signed by the minor's parent or guardian. It held he could disaffirm the release, its arbitration clause and its delegation provision on reaching majority, and found "no error" in the ruling that there was no valid, enforceable arbitration agreement. This is West Virginia law. For a family there, who actually signed can matter.

The New Jersey Appellate Division, in Docket No. A-1861-20, decided May 16, 2022 and approved for publication, held that an adult patron who signed the agreement himself must arbitrate his own injury claims. It called the language "a clear and unambiguous waiver" of his right to a jury trial. This is New Jersey law, and it concerned an adult's own claims, not a child's.

The Supreme Court of Texas, in No. 24-0273, opinion delivered May 23, 2025, addressed an Urban Air park release a parent signed on a first visit. Its clause sent disputes over "the scope, arbitrability, or validity" of the arbitration agreement to arbitration, so whether the release covered a later visit was for an arbitrator. The court affirmed and remanded for an order compelling arbitration, and expressly expressed "no opinion" on whether the release covered the later visit. This is Texas law.

The Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal, in Case No. 5D2024-1487, decided July 11, 2025, held that an adult patron's agreement covered "use of any portion of the Premises," so the claim had "a significant relationship" to it. The court reversed and remanded for an order compelling arbitration. It decided only that. This is Florida law.

The Supreme Court of Missouri, in No. SC100512, opinion issued March 4, 2025, addressed a release a parent signed for a minor. Because its delegation clause was not specifically challenged, the challenges to the signer's authority and to the release's reach beyond the day it was signed went to the arbitrator. The court vacated the order refusing arbitration and remanded. It stated that nothing in the opinion suggests how the arbitrator should rule. This is Missouri law.

For a parent, the common thread is this: if a court sends your child's dispute to arbitration, that is not a ruling that your child has no claim. A question worth asking is whether a court in your state has addressed the release itself, the arbitration clause, or neither.

How State Law Shapes What the Waiver Does and Does Not Decide

No single federal rule decides whether a parent's pre-injury release binds a child. State court decisions and, in some states, statutes control. A ruling from one state does not tell a family in another state how its own courts will treat the waiver they signed.

The waiver is only one of several state-law questions in a child's trampoline injury case. Limitation periods differ by state. So do fault rules, which decide how a court treats an injured person's own share of responsibility, damages rules and wrongful-death rules. A broader look at trampoline park waivers and injury claims sets out how release and arbitration terms interact.

A statute of limitations is the period within which a claim must be filed. Some states pause, or toll, that period for a minor, meaning it does not start running in the usual way while the injured person is a child. Whether and how that applies is a question of each state's law, and this page states no state's period.

The agreements themselves sometimes try to set timing too. The Pennsylvania agreement quoted in that court's opinion said claims "SHALL BE BROUGHT WITHIN ONE YEAR OF ITS ACCRUAL." The court found it did not need to address that term because the arbitration provision could not bind the minor.

A parent's own claims, such as for a child's medical expenses, can be treated differently from the child's claims, and may run on a different clock. Since two sets of rules may apply to one injury, a parent may weigh checking the agreement for any time-limit language and asking which state's timing rules apply to the parent's claims and to the child's.

What a Signed Waiver Does Not Decide About a Child's Claim

Setting a waiver aside does not establish a claim. Whether a release is enforced or not is a threshold question. Your child's claim still rests on what the state's law asks and on the facts.

If your child was hurt, a negligence claim generally looks at four things: a duty of care, a breach of that duty, causation linking the breach to the injury, and damages. The injury itself does not prove that anyone was at fault; whether each element is met depends on what happened.

Trampoline park cases can involve more than one legal theory. Premises liability is the responsibility a business may have for the condition of the property it controls. Negligent supervision is a claim that the people responsible for watching an activity did not take reasonable care in doing so. Product liability is a separate theory that applies where equipment, such as a trampoline bed, frame or pad, is alleged to be defective; an accident does not by itself prove a defect. Families whose question is about a child's injury more broadly may find the page on a child injured on a trampoline useful.

Courts also distinguish degrees of conduct. Gross negligence means conduct beyond ordinary carelessness, often described as reckless disregard for safety. Whether a particular release can reach gross negligence, or conduct described as willful or wanton, is a question each state's law decides.

If you are a parent sorting through this, a signature has not necessarily ended your child's claim, and the claim still turns on the facts and the state's law. What happened, where, and with what equipment are the questions a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.

If the Park Points to Arbitration: What the Clause Means for Where a Dispute Is Heard

An arbitration clause decides where a dispute is heard, not whether it has merit. It sends disputes to a private arbitrator instead of a judge and jury. The New Jersey agreement, for example, stated the parties "will not have the right to have their claim(s) determined by a jury."

Many trampoline park agreements also contain a delegation clause, a term inside the arbitration clause that hands questions about the clause's own scope or validity to the arbitrator instead of a court. In Texas (No. 24-0273), it meant an arbitrator, not a court, decides whether a release signed on a first visit covered a later one, under Texas law. In Missouri (No. SC100512), because the delegation clause was not specifically challenged, the questions about the signer's authority went to the arbitrator, under Missouri law. West Virginia's decision noted that the families there "promptly challenged" the delegation provision itself.

Pennsylvania (Nos. 24 EAP 2023 and 25 EAP 2023) went the other way on the core point under its own law: the arbitration provision could not be enforced against the minor at all.

None of these rulings resolved whether a release of liability bars a child's injury claim. A family whose dispute is sent to arbitration has had the forum decided, not the claim. If a park raises arbitration, a parent may weigh whether the agreement contains a delegation clause and whether, and how, it has been challenged, since the Missouri and West Virginia decisions turned in part on that.

Records and Information That Often Matter in Waiver and Injury Cases

The document itself is usually at the center. If you were a parent who signed, the records that usually matter include the waiver or release as it was presented, including any arbitration clause, delegation clause, choice-of-law term or time limit, and the circumstances of signing: who signed, on what date and for which visit. The Texas and Missouri decisions show why the date and visit can matter, and the West Virginia decision shows why who signed can matter.

Other records that often matter in these cases include:

• the child's medical records and records of treatment;
• photographs or video from the park;
• any incident report the facility prepared;
• the names and contact information of witnesses;
• the child's age at the time of the injury, which can bear on how a state treats a minor's contract and timing rules.

These records help show what happened, who controlled the area or equipment, and which state's law applies. For a parent, what is at stake is that the answer to whether the waiver matters may sit in these details. If you are trying to understand how the agreement you signed fits with the facts of your child's injury, a conversation with our attorney can cover the document, the dates and the records involved. For more on how these claims proceed, see the overview of a trampoline park injury claim.