Chelsea Parkin, from Barnsley, was visiting the Bounce Trampoline Park in Peterborough with some of her family. She had been using a number of the trampolines for about 30 minutes with no incidents.  She then jumped from one of the trampolines into a foam pit, expecting it to have enough foam in it for her to do so, but it didn’t.  She hit both feet hard on the bottom of the pit and felt pain straight away in her left foot and ankle.   In tremendous pain, she managed to scramble out of the pit, but couldn’t really move.  Her cousins helped her to hobble to the main area of the park, where she reported the accident to a marshal.  He did not seem to care and didn’t complete any accident record.

Chelsea attended A & E in Peterborough on the same day and in Barnsley a little later. She was diagnosed with a soft tissue injury and fitted with and air boot and crutches.  She suffered pain for around seven weeks.

Chelsea contacted Graysons to see if she could claim compensation from the trampoline park, and Jonathan took up her case.  He contacted the park, claiming that the accident was due to the negligence and/or breach of statutory duty of the park owners, their employees or agents.  Liability was denied so Jonathan issued proceedings against the park, claiming, amongst other things, that it had failed to:

• maintain a safe level of foam in the pit when it was foreseeable that customers would come into contact with the floor and causing Chelsea to believe she could jump into to the pit in the belief that she would be safe
• maintain the premises sufficiently
• carry out adequate risk assessments
• implement any necessary measures from any risk assessments that were carried out
• provide any warnings that the pit was not safe
• stop people jumping into the pit
• provide adequate supervision
• provide proper training for staff

Documents provided by the park included its inspection records.  These showed that the daily inspection sheet for the day on which the accident occurred were blank, but for the first page.  No check sheets showing that the foam pit had been checked during the day (or at all) were provided.

A trial date was set, but the park decided to settle about one month before the case was heard and Jonathan was able to negotiate a settlement of £5,500.

If you have had an accident and you think that it was not your fault, contact our personal injury experts now.  We will discuss your case and if we are able to take it on, we will offer you a no win, no fee agreement.  You can also find out more about claiming compensation for accidents on our web pages.

Author:  Jonathan West, personal injury partner.