Birthday party at an indoor trampoline or adventure park off Route 9 in Freehold Township. You signed the tablet at the front counter without reading it, because everyone does. Two hours later your kid comes off a jump wrong, or gets landed on by a much bigger kid in the same pit, and you are in the emergency room looking at a broken arm.
Then someone tells you that you signed a waiver, so there is nothing you can do. In New Jersey, that is wrong.
A parent cannot sign away a child’s injury claim
This is settled by the New Jersey Supreme Court in Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park, 187 N.J. 323 (2006). A twelve-year-old was injured at a skate park after his mother signed a release on his behalf. The Court held that a pre-injury release of liability signed by a parent on behalf of a minor child violates public policy and is unenforceable.
The reasoning is straightforward: the claim belongs to the child, not to the parent, and a parent is not permitted to bargain it away before the child is ever hurt. The business drafted the form, the business set the terms, and the child had no say in any of it.
So the tablet you signed at the counter does not close the door on your child’s claim. It never did.
The arbitration clause is a different question
Here is the part that catches people. In the same case, the Court treated the arbitration provision differently from the liability release and upheld a parent’s authority to agree to arbitrate the minor’s claim. Choosing arbitration is choosing a forum — it does not extinguish the claim the way a release tries to.
Most of these sign-in agreements now contain an arbitration clause. That means the real early fight in a trampoline park case is often not whether your child has a claim, but where it gets decided. That is a question worth having answered by a lawyer who has actually read the specific document you signed, because these forms differ from one operator to the next.
What actually makes these cases
An injury alone is not a claim. Jumping is inherently risky and everyone knows it. What builds a case is a failure by the operator, and in indoor jump parks the recurring ones are specific:
- Court monitor staffing. Too few attendants, or attendants who are teenagers with no meaningful training, watching too many trampolines at once.
- Rules that are posted but never enforced. One jumper per trampoline, no double bouncing, size and age separation. If a much larger person was allowed into a kids’ session, that is a supervision failure.
- Foam pit and landing depth. Compacted or under-filled foam pits are a known injury source.
- Worn or exposed hardware. Torn pads, gaps between trampoline beds, exposed springs or frames at the edges.
- Prior incidents. If the same hazard hurt other kids before yours, that history matters.
This is ordinary premises liability against a business that invited the public in. The same principles that govern a fall in a store apply here — see our explanation of how NJ premises liability works.
Your child’s deadline is not the same as yours
New Jersey generally gives an injured person two years to file a personal injury lawsuit. For a minor, the clock is tolled — the child ordinarily has until two years after turning 18. That sounds like plenty of time, and it is the reason many families wait.
Waiting is still a mistake, for two reasons:
- The parent’s own claim — for medical bills paid on the child’s behalf — is not tolled the same way, and can expire while everyone assumes there is no rush.
- Evidence disappears. Security video at these facilities is often overwritten in weeks. Incident reports, the staffing roster for that session, and maintenance logs are all obtainable early and much harder to get later. A preservation letter sent in the first days is worth more than anything filed in year three.
More on the timing rules is in our post on NJ injury filing deadlines.
What to do this week
- Get the child treated and follow through on every appointment. Gaps in treatment get used against the claim.
- Ask the park for a copy of the incident report and the exact time of the injury.
- Photograph the equipment and the area if you can get back there.
- Write down the names of any staff or other parents who saw it.
- Do not give a recorded statement to the park’s insurer before you have talked to a lawyer.
Free consultation
Goldman Law Firm handles injury claims across Monmouth County, including Freehold Township — see our Freehold Township personal injury page and our NJ personal injury practice. If your child was hurt at a jump park, call us. We will read the agreement you signed and tell you exactly what it does and does not do. The consultation is free.