HOUSTON - The First Court of Appeals today affirmed a summary judgment win in favor of a bounce house company that was sued after a child fractured his leg while jumping in an inflatable bounce house.
Alleging gross negligence, Anuj Garg sued Katy Jumps claiming his seven-year old son fractured his femur while jumping in one of the company’s inflatable bounce houses with a bigger kid at a birthday party.
The bigger kid landed before Garg’s son and the minor did not have a good landing, the First Court’s opinion states.
Grag claims Katy Jumps breached the American Society for Testing and Materials standards because it did not have a trained attendant supervising the children’s play in the bounce house.
Court records show the trial court granted Katy Jumps’ motion for summary judgment, dismissing Garg’s claims, which led him to appeal.
According to the opinion, Garg alleges that his son’s injury could have been avoided if Katy Jumps had not breached its duty to provide a trained attendant to supervise the children’s bounce house play.
In support, Garg cites testimony that Katy Jumps does not provide an attendant or tell customers that the bounce house owner’s manual requires users to be of similar age range, height and weight.
He also cites his safety expert’s opinion that unsupervised use of a bounce house risks injury because children of disproportionate weights may jump at the same time and collide.
“Even if we concluded that the safety expert’s opinion is some evidence that allowing persons of disproportionate weight to jump together in a bounce house is dangerous, Garg’s specific causation theory was speculative,” the opinion states. “Because there is no evidence that the children’s weights were disproportionate, Garg’s claim that Jumps’ supervision could have prevented (his son’s) injury is ‘mere conjecture, guess, or speculation.’
“The trial court thus did not err in granting the no-evidence summary judgment on Garg’s negligence and negligence per se claims.”
Appeals case No. 01-22-00898-CV