Trampoline Park Accidents in Georgia

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The waiver at the front desk of a Georgia trampoline park is written to sound final. It tells the signer that nothing happening inside the building can be the basis of a lawsuit, even an injury an employee negligently caused a child. Parents sign it without reading it because a birthday party is waiting. What the document does not say is that Georgia law refuses to enforce a release that far, and that a release a parent signs for a child stands on ground Georgia courts have never firmly settled. The commercial trampoline park is a premises-liability defendant with a stack of waivers, and the strength of those waivers is the central question every one of these claims turns on.

A Commercial Premises With a Duty of Ordinary Care

A trampoline park is not a backyard. It invites paying customers onto its premises, which makes those customers invitees owed ordinary care to keep the premises and approaches safe under OCGA 51-3-1. That duty reaches the things a competent operator controls: trampoline beds and springs maintained in safe condition, padding over hard edges, court monitors who actually watch the jumping areas, separation of small children from larger jumpers, enforcement of one-jumper-per-trampoline and capacity rules, and warning of dangers a customer cannot see. A claim that the park breached this ordinary-care duty is the baseline, and the waiver is the obstacle the claim has to clear.

The Waiver Ceiling Georgia Will Not Let an Operator Cross

Georgia generally enforces a liability waiver, but only within firm limits. A release is enforceable only if it is in writing, uses clear and unambiguous language, is signed voluntarily, and does not violate public policy, and even a valid release cannot waive liability for gross negligence or willful misconduct. The Georgia Court of Appeals fixed that ceiling in McFann v. Sky Warriors, Inc., 268 Ga. App. 750 (2004), holding that an exculpatory agreement cannot shield a defendant from gross negligence or willful misconduct and that whether conduct reached that level was a jury question. So the waiver can defeat a claim of ordinary negligence, a single missed inspection, an isolated lapse, but it does no work against conduct that shows reckless disregard for safety.

Ordinary negligence is a failure to use reasonable care. Gross negligence is a far more serious departure, a reckless disregard of the consequences. In a trampoline-park setting it can look like running equipment with known serious defects, ignoring repeated injuries from the same unenforced rule, allowing dangerous overcrowding, or staff watching a small child in a teen jump area and doing nothing. When the facts support that level of culpability, the signed waiver provides no protection.

The Unsettled Question of Waivers Signed by Parents for Minors

The harder question is the one parents never think to ask: can a parent sign away a child’s own future claim. Georgia law has not definitively answered it. Courts have not squarely held that a parent may extinguish a minor child’s negligence claim by signing a pre-injury release, and there is reason to doubt that such a release fully binds the child, particularly where the injury is severe. The uncertainty is structural, because a minor generally cannot release their own claim and a parent’s authority to do it for them sits in contested territory. The practical consequence is that even where a parental waiver might bar the parent’s derivative claim, the child’s separate claim may survive it. This unsettled parental-waiver question is what most distinguishes a trampoline-park case from an adult-only release.

Georgia Does Not Inspect These Parks

A point that surprises many families is the regulatory vacuum. Georgia regulates many amusement rides through the state fire-safety and amusement-ride framework, but trampoline parks have largely fallen outside that regime, in part because they lack the moving machinery the ride rules target. A 2015 bill that would have imposed minimum standards, mandatory licensing, inspections, and record-keeping on Georgia trampoline parks failed to pass, leaving the industry to its voluntary consensus standards, such as the ASTM F2970 practice for trampoline courts, rather than enforceable state inspections. The gap does not eliminate liability. It means a claim usually cannot point to a specific code violation and must instead prove what a reasonable trampoline-park operator would have done, frequently by reference to those voluntary standards and the park’s own rules.

Foreseeable Misuse and the Theories That Survive a Waiver

Trampoline-park injuries are predictable, and predictability is itself a legal fact. Operators know that jumpers will attempt flips, that mismatched sizes collide in a foam pit, and that crowding produces double-bounce ejections; a danger the operator should foresee is a danger the operator must reasonably guard against, and “the customer misused it” is a weaker defense when the misuse was the obvious and recurring kind. Several theories can survive a valid waiver because they reach beyond ordinary negligence or beyond the park itself. Negligent supervision targets a failure to monitor and separate jumpers. Product liability targets a defective trampoline, pad, or foam pit and runs against the manufacturer, who never signed and never benefited from the customer’s waiver. Negligent hiring and training targets unqualified or untrained staff. And a third-party defendant, an equipment manufacturer or a maintenance contractor, sits outside the release entirely.

How Minority Tolling Splits a Child’s Deadline From a Parent’s

The dates below illustrate only how the filing deadline runs for an injured child; they assign no value and predict no outcome. Georgia’s two-year personal-injury limitations period under OCGA 9-3-33 is tolled during minority by OCGA 9-3-90, so the clock for a child’s own claim does not start until the eighteenth birthday. Suppose a ten-year-old is injured at a trampoline park on June 1, 2026. The child’s own claim is generally preserved until roughly age twenty, while a parent’s separate derivative claim for the child’s medical expenses is not tolled and runs from the injury date. The two clocks diverge from a single accident. The arithmetic shows only how minority shifts one deadline and not the other; it says nothing about any claim’s worth.

Medical-Evidence and Bifurcation Rules for Trampoline Injuries

Senate Bill 68, the 2025 reform effective for claims arising on or after April 21, 2025, is screened in every Georgia injury matter. Its medical-evidence rule limits recoverable medical expenses to the reasonable value of necessary care and makes amounts actually paid admissible alongside billed charges, which shapes the often-substantial specials in trampoline fractures, spinal injuries, and head trauma. In a qualifying case with at least $150,000 in controversy, either party may request bifurcation of liability and damages. The negligent-security framework does not apply, because a trampoline injury is not third-party criminal conduct, and the seatbelt and attorney-fee provisions are off point. Comparative fault and the 50% bar, applied to a child by the age-and-capacity standard of OCGA 51-1-5, are owned by the comparative-negligence guide (#29); the assumption-of-risk doctrine and its limits are owned by the sports-injury guide (#147); both are referenced rather than re-explained.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does signing a trampoline-park waiver in Georgia give up all rights to sue?
No. A Georgia waiver can bar an ordinary-negligence claim if it is clear, voluntary, and consistent with public policy, but it cannot waive gross negligence or willful misconduct, as McFann v. Sky Warriors, Inc., 268 Ga. App. 750 (2004) holds.

Can a parent waive a child’s right to sue a trampoline park?
Georgia law is unsettled on whether a parent’s pre-injury release binds a minor child’s own claim, and courts have not firmly held that it does, so a child’s separate claim may survive a waiver that the parent signed, particularly where the injury is severe.

Does Georgia inspect trampoline parks?
Largely no. Trampoline parks have fallen outside Georgia’s amusement-ride regulation, and a 2015 bill requiring licensing, inspections, and record-keeping failed, leaving voluntary consensus standards like ASTM F2970 rather than enforceable state inspections, so claims usually prove what a reasonable operator would have done.

Who besides the park can be liable for a trampoline injury?
A manufacturer of a defective trampoline, pad, or foam pit, and a maintenance contractor, can face liability outside the customer’s waiver, because they did not sign it and did not benefit from it.

  • Duty of owner or occupier of land to invitee, OCGA 51-3-1
  • Waiver ceiling for gross negligence and willful misconduct, McFann v. Sky Warriors, Inc., 268 Ga. App. 750 (2004)
  • Unsettled status of parental pre-injury waivers of a minor’s claim under Georgia law
  • Standard of care for a child of tender years, OCGA 51-1-5
  • Personal-injury statute of limitations, OCGA 9-3-33; tolling for minors, OCGA 9-3-90
  • Voluntary trampoline-court safety standard, ASTM F2970; absence of Georgia state trampoline-park inspection regime
  • Senate Bill 68 (2025): reasonable-value medical evidence; trial bifurcation

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about how Georgia law treats trampoline-park accidents, including the duty owed to invitees, the limits on liability waivers, the unsettled status of parental waivers of a minor’s claim, and the state’s lack of a trampoline-park inspection regime. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and may not reflect the most recent changes in the law. The governing analysis depends on the waiver, the conduct involved, and the specific facts. A person dealing with a trampoline-park injury in Georgia should consult a licensed Georgia attorney about the particular situation.

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