Accident Investigation and Reconstruction
The first step is to figure out precisely why the accident happened. We quickly gather every piece of evidence available, which is time-sensitive, because some evidence may not be available only a few days after the accident. The trampoline park or amusement park will have its own experts and attorneys at the scene immediately, so you must counter this by getting your attorneys and experts working on the case too.
Scene Inspections are Time Sensitive. We want our experts at the scene as soon as possible so they can (1) inspect and photograph the scene, (2) obtain certain measurements by hand and through computer-aided video equipment, and (3) inspect and photograph the equipment involved. Our experts will use all of the evidence to reconstruct the accident, second-by-second, and will determine what caused the accident.
Scene Inspection is Critical. Our Accident Reconstruction Expert will inspect all of the equipment involved in the accident and the trampoline park’s safety measures and procedures. Our experts will use this data, along with the other available evidence, to determine how the accident unfolded.
Written Discovery of Trampoline Park. We will obtain written discovery materials from the trampoline park, including safety measures and procedures, equipment specifications, maintenance and inspection records, and other pertinent materials. We analyze these materials, along with our experts, to further discover why the accident happened.
Liability Issues
The liability issues in a trampoline-park accident case are often complex and multi-faceted.
Other Defendants. Your attorney must carefully evaluate whether other defendants beyond the trampoline park contributed to causing the accident. Potential additional defendants are the equipment manufacturer, maintenance providers, and other manufacturers.
Products Liability. A defect in the equipment could have contributed, for example, a defect in the safety measures built in or not built in to the equipment. Your attorney needs to have extensive experience handling complex products liability claims in order to assess and handle this potential aspect of your case.
Comparative Negligence. If additional defendants are involved, then your State’s law on comparative negligence will be implicated. This law requires a jury to determine what percentage of responsibility each defendant had for causing the accident.
Comparative negligence law will also be implicated if the victim (you or your loved one) contributed to causing the accident or injuries, for example, by not adhering to the trampoline park’s safety rules.
Importantly, you may still recover from the trampoline park even if you contributed to causing the accident. For example, if you or your loved one made a minor mistake in not following the safety rules but the trampoline park made a much more significant mistake, then it would be reasonable for a jury to assign most of the responsibility for the accident to the trampoline park and little responsibility to you. Hence, do not give up on your right to recover even if you may be partially responsible for the accident.
Defendant’s Finances and Insurance
One of the initial critical decisions in any plaintiffs’ case is whether the defendant(s) have enough funds through a combination of their own cash plus insurance coverage to compensate the individuals injured in the accident. As such, your attorney must quickly determine the trampoline park’s financial situation and discover what insurance is available.
Liability Insurance. Trampoline parks and amusement parks typically maintain at least $1 million in liability insurance, but sometimes that insurance will not be enough to cover all of the injuries caused by the accident if your injuries are very severe and/or other parties were injured too in the same accident.
Self-insurance and Layered Insurance. Many large companies, including large trampoline parks and amusement parks, are self-insured for some portion of the first monies paid out to compensate for injuries. After that, the large company will likely have various layers of outside insurance. For example, a trampoline park may have the typical $1 million in liability insurance, followed by some amount of self-insurance ($1 million, for example), and then followed by layers of insurance provided by outside insurers.
In this example, the liability insurer pays the first $1 million. If that is not enough to fully compensate everyone injured, then the trampoline park is responsible for the next $1 million (self-insurance layer). If that is still not enough, the first layer of outside insurance is at risk, and so on, going up the various insurance layers.
These multiple layers of insurance often complicate attempts to settle cases at mediation. A settlement that includes multiple insurance layers will necessarily require more corporate decision-makers to agree to settle and to agree on a particular settlement amount. This will often require complex negotiations on how much each layer is willing to pay, and most importantly, dealing with the top layer(s) who will be the most reluctant to pay. Given the complexity of negotiating settlements like this, common in trucking accidents, you need an attorney who has handled very large personal injury cases that required multi-layered negotiations.
Common Causes of Trampoline Park Accidents
Our experts analyze all of the available evidence to determine which of these common causes contributed to causing the accident.
- Lack of Supervision
- Lack of Safety Devices
- Unsafe/Defective Equipment
- Broken Equipment
- Improper Maintenance of Equipment
- Lack of Maintenance of Equipment
- Lack of Proper Safety Warnings
- Lack of Proper Safety Signage
- Too Many people on Attraction at the same time
- Not Properly Inspected prior to use
- Improper Supervision of Attraction
- Untrained Staff