Can you sue a trampoline park if you signed a waiver? In many situations, yes.

The waiver is the beginning of the analysis, not the end.

A signed waiver does not automatically end a trampoline park injury claim. Whether it holds is never a simple yes or no. It depends on a detailed analysis of the law of the state where the case is filed. It depends on the language of the waiver. And it depends on the facts surrounding it.

Every trampoline park requires a waiver, and every park's insurance company treats that document as the end of the conversation. That is what it is designed for. The first thing many injured guests hear, sometimes before they have left the building, is that they signed away their rights at the front desk.

The document is real. Its power is routinely overstated. Waivers are contracts and contracts have rules. They must be clear. They can only cover what the law allows. They only bind the people who actually agreed to them. When a serious injury happens because a park cut corners or concealed what it knew, the analysis has barely started when the waiver comes out of the filing cabinet.

What does a trampoline park waiver actually say?

Most trampoline park waivers do three things at once, and it helps to see them separately.

First, a release: language stating that the guest gives up the right to sue the park, and often a list of affiliated companies, for injuries at the facility. Second, an assumption-of-risk recital: a statement that jumping is dangerous and the guest accepts those dangers. Third, increasingly, an arbitration clause: an agreement that any dispute will be decided in private arbitration rather than by a jury.

Each piece has its own limits. The release only reaches the parties and conduct it lawfully covers. The assumption of risk only covers risks a guest could actually know about or reasonably appreciate. And the arbitration clause changes where a claim is decided, not whether it has merit.

When do trampoline park waivers fail?

There is no master list. What follows are five ways we have attacked waivers in our own trampoline park cases.

1. The conduct went beyond ordinary negligence

In most states, a waiver cannot excuse gross negligence, recklessness, or willful misconduct. A park that ignores known hazards, skips inspections it knows are needed, or keeps a dangerous attraction running is not describing the ordinary risk of bouncing; it is describing conduct many courts will not let a form absolve. Where the line sits varies by state, which is exactly why these cases deserve evaluation rather than assumptions.

2. The danger was known to the park and hidden from you

A guest can accept a known risk. A guest cannot accept a hidden one. When the companies behind an attraction know it has hurt people before and say nothing to the families lining up to use it, the waiver does not answer for that silence. This principle was at the center of our Collins case, where the evidence showed the attraction that paralyzed our client had already proven dangerous at another park before it was installed.

3. The injured person was a child

Many states restrict a parent's ability to sign away a child's injury claims, and courts scrutinize these agreements closely. In 2025, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that trampoline park participation agreements and arbitration provisions signed by one parent were not enforceable against the injured minors or the non-signing parents in the circumstances before it. The rules differ state to state, but the pattern is consistent: children's claims are the place waivers fail most often.

4. The language was overbroad, unclear, or against public policy

Waivers are construed against the companies that drafted them. Documents that try to release everything, everywhere, forever, or that bury their terms, or that conflict with a state's public policy, can fail on their own words. The park chose the language. The park lives with its defects.

5. The right person did not sign

A waiver binds the people who agreed to it. When the signature on the form belongs to someone else, or when the person hurt was not the person who signed, enforceability becomes a genuine question rather than a foregone conclusion. Who signed, for whom, and with what authority is one of the first things we examine in every file.

These five are not the whole arsenal. Which arguments apply is never a simple yes or no. It takes a detailed analysis of the law of the state where the case is filed. It takes a close read of the waiver's language. It takes the facts surrounding the document and the injury. The best chance of overcoming a waiver belongs to the patron or the referring lawyer who retains counsel steeped in this law with a history of defeating these documents. We have that history. We have gotten justice for patrons who signed waivers at large franchise parks and at independent parks alike.

Does the arbitration clause kill the case?

No. An arbitration clause changes the forum, not the merits.

Parks route claims into arbitration because they believe the private forum favors them: no jury, less publicity, a faster clock. What arbitration does not do is make evidence disappear. A claim that is fully investigated and fully prepared can be won there, and ours was. We prepared the Collins matter the way we prepare a jury trial, and the arbitrator entered a $15.6 million award, with a finding that there had been a systemic failure to bring necessary information to the patron.

There is also a reason the forum does not worry us: arbitration is a specialty of this firm. Humphrey, Farrington & McClain has handled more than 1,000 arbitrations since 2020, work that has produced more than $100 million in awards for our clients. That experience builds something no waiver can take away: a working knowledge of the arbitrators themselves, how they run their proceedings, what evidence they credit, and how to try a case to the person actually deciding it. When a park's paperwork moves your claim into arbitration, it is moving the claim into the forum where we do much of our work.

Case Account The Collins arbitration: how a signed waiver became a $15.6 million award →

What should you do if you were seriously hurt after signing a waiver?

Do not accept the park's answer about your rights. Act immediately. The evidence that beats a waiver disappears fast.

The argument against a waiver is built from proof: the surveillance video, the inspection and maintenance logs, the staffing and training records, the prior incident reports, and the franchisor's file on the attraction. Some parks keep video for only a matter of weeks. Get medical care, keep the waiver and your receipts, photograph what you can, and contact us before you give any statement to the park's insurer. Once we are retained, we put the park on notice and send the preservation demands ourselves. We know what to demand because we have demanded it before.