Houston Jury Returns Record $11.485 Million Trampoline Park Brain Injury Verdict

On the first day of his summer vacation in 2013, a 16-year-old came to Cosmic Jump, an indoor trampoline park in Houston, to jump with friends. The trampoline bed he landed on had a tear in it. He dropped roughly five feet through the opening and struck the concrete floor below. The fall fractured his skull.

The head injury was severe. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and began having seizures. The damage did not fade. Years afterward he still had trouble walking and struggled with memory and other everyday tasks, and his ability to earn a living going forward was compromised.

His family hired Crosley Law, and Tom Crosley and Charlie Gustin took the case to trial in the 334th District Court of Harris County. The suit named NTE Houston I, LLC, the company that operated Cosmic Jump. Over a two-week trial, the lawyers put on evidence that the park already knew about the torn trampoline before the teenager ever arrived. The tear had not been repaired, and staff had not blocked off the equipment or warned customers about it.

Cosmic Jump leaned on a waiver the family had signed before the visit, a standard pre-injury release of the kind trampoline parks ask every customer to sign. That document did not end the case. Under Texas law, a pre-injury release cannot protect a business from its own gross negligence, so the jury was free to weigh whether the park's conduct crossed that line.

In early 2016, the jury found Cosmic Jump grossly negligent and returned $11,485,000. About $5.485 million of that was compensatory damages, with more than half set aside for the teenager's future medical needs and lost earning capacity. The jury added $6 million in punitive damages on top of the compensatory award.

At the time, it was the largest jury verdict ever returned against a commercial trampoline park in the United States. TopVerdict later ranked the case No. 23 on its list of the top Texas verdicts of 2016.