Operator guides
Your waiver is doing less than you think.
Owners treat the signed waiver as the end of the story. Courts don’t. What a release actually blocks depends on the claim, on your state, and, more than anything, on whether the guest was a minor.
Before you read further
This guide is general information for facility operators. It is not legal advice, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship with anyone. The law in this area changes and varies by state, and waiver law especially so: a rule described here can be different in your state, or different next year. Decisions about your records, your waiver, and your obligations belong with your facility’s own counsel and your insurer.
The state-law snapshot on this page was verified against primary and secondary sources on August 31, 2026. Waiver law moves: legislatures amend statutes and courts revisit precedent, so treat every row below as a starting point for a conversation with counsel, not as the current law of your state.
No waiver blocks gross negligence.
Courts across the country refuse to enforce releases against gross negligence or recklessness. If the allegation is that you skipped inspections or ignored a known hazard, the waiver isn’t the fight, your records are.
Ordinary negligence: sometimes, with conditions.
Some states enforce a clear, conspicuous release against ordinary-negligence claims. Others narrow them, or void them outright on public-policy grounds. The same form that holds in one state does nothing next door.
A parent’s signature often can’t waive a child’s claim.
In many states, courts hold that a parent cannot sign away a minor’s right to sue. Some states enforce parental releases; many limit or reject them. If your guests are mostly under 18, trampoline parks, playgrounds, gymnastics, cheer, the majority of your waivers stand on the weakest ground.
What actually holds up
When the release is challenged, and with a minor, it will be, the case turns on negligence: what you inspected, who you trained, what you fixed and when. That is a records question. The operators who survive it are the ones who can produce the log, not the ones with the thickest waiver.
Educational overview, not legal advice. Waiver enforceability is state- and fact-specific, have counsel review yours. Telure documents your work. It is not a safety system.
The state-by-state detail
First, the authority behind the everywhere rule. The anchor is City of Santa Barbara v. Superior Court, 41 Cal.4th 747 (2007), the California Supreme Court’s holding that a release cannot excuse future gross negligence, and 50-state surveys describe that position as the majority rule. Courts in Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Colorado, among others, have reached the same conclusion (Zavras, Mass. App. 1997; Lamp v. Reynolds, Mich. App. 2002; Vitale, N.J. App. Div. 2016; McShane v. Stirling Ranch, Colo. 2017). Connecticut illustrates how little comfort the doctrine’s edges offer: its courts do not treat gross negligence as a separate category, and the state’s supreme court still voided a snowtubing operator’s waiver on public policy grounds (Hanks v. Powder Ridge, 885 A.2d 734 (Conn. 2005)).
The three groups below follow how the authority actually falls for waivers signed on behalf of minors. If your state appears in neither of the first two, do not assume either answer: in several states the authority is thin, unpublished, or conflicting, and the honest reading is that the question is open. Ask your counsel.
Group one
Enforced, with limits
These states have enforced parental waivers, and every one of them attached a limit. The limit is the row that matters.
| State | Authority | Scope and limits | What this means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon | Or. Laws 2026, ch. 132, section 1 (SB 1517), in force 7 April 2026 | Sport, fitness and recreational activity, and volunteering to maintain the places used for one. It displaces the earlier rule of Bagley v. Mt. Bachelor for claims arising on or after 7 April 2026; an injury before that date is still governed by the old law. | A parent or guardian may release ordinary negligence for a participant under 18, and a conforming release is no longer void as a matter of law. Seven categories are carved out and cannot be waived. Two of them turn on a facility's own records: negligent maintenance or inspection of safety equipment the operator supplies, and negligent safety training of the operator's own staff. Gross negligence is another. No court has construed the Act yet. Any 50-state chart older than April 2026 still lists Oregon the other way round. |
| Ohio | Zivich v. Mentor Soccer Club, 696 N.E.2d 201 (1998) | A nonprofit, volunteer-run sports club. Extension to commercial operators rests on lower-court decisions only. | A commercial facility should not read this case as its own shield without counsel confirming how far it has actually been extended. |
| California | Hohe v. San Diego Unified School District (1990); City of Santa Barbara v. Superior Court (2007) | Ordinary negligence only. City of Santa Barbara enforced a parental release as to ordinary negligence while holding that releases cannot reach gross negligence. | A parental waiver can hold here, but only for the least serious tier of conduct. The serious cases are exactly the ones it does not cover. |
| Colorado | C.R.S. 13-22-107 (2003) | A statute passed to supersede Cooper v. Aspen Skiing (2002). It never covers willful, wanton, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, by its own terms (13-22-107(4)). | The legislature granted the protection and wrote its edge into the statute. Read the edge as carefully as the grant. |
| Florida | Fla. Stat. 744.301(3) | Inherent risks only, with specific required notice text, and only a rebuttable presumption. It does not reach the provider's own negligence. | If the claim is that you were negligent, this statute does not answer it. And the notice text has to be exactly right. |
| Maryland | BJ's Wholesale Club v. Rosen, 435 Md. 714 (2013) | A commercial context. | One of the clearer commercial holdings in this group, which is why it gets cited far beyond Maryland. |
| Massachusetts | Sharon v. City of Newton, 437 Mass. 99 (2002) | Parental releases recognized; Massachusetts courts have separately refused to let releases reach grossly negligent conduct (Zavras, Mass. App. 1997). | The signature helps here, and the gross negligence line still holds against it. |
| Alaska | Alaska Stat. 09.65.292 | The statute excludes reckless or grossly negligent conduct (09.65.292(b)), and a separate statute, AS 05.45.120, bars ski-area releases for ski injuries. | Statutory permission with a statutory edge, plus a hard carve-out if you operate a ski area. |
| North Dakota | Kondrad v. Bismarck Park District, 2003 ND 4 | Enforced by the state's highest court. | Among the cleaner yes answers, and still worth pairing with the gross negligence rule above. |
Everywhere in this table, assume the gross negligence rule from the summary above still applies unless your counsel tells you otherwise.
Group two
Not enforced
In these states, courts have refused to enforce parental waivers against a minor’s claim, several of them in commercial recreation cases directly comparable to a movement facility. A state that voids every pre-injury release, adults included, is not listed here: there the minors analysis never begins, and those states are in group three below.
| State | Authority | Scope and limits | What this means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park, 187 N.J. 323 (2006) | A commercial skate park. The court did hold that parents can bind the minor to arbitration. | The liability release fails, but an arbitration clause in the same document can still stand. The paper is not worthless; it is just not a shield. |
| Washington | Scott v. Pacific West Mountain Resort, 119 Wn.2d 484 (1992) | A parental release does not bar the child's own claim. | Do not plan around the signature here. |
| Utah | Hawkins ex rel. Hawkins v. Peart, 37 P.3d 1062 (Utah 2001); reaffirmed in Rutherford v. Talisker, 2019 UT 27 | A separate statute covers equine activities only (78B-4-203). | Outside the equine context, do not rely on a parental release in Utah. The rule was reaffirmed as recently as 2019. |
| Michigan | Woodman v. Kera LLC, 486 Mich. 228 (2010); MCL 700.5109 (2011) | After Woodman, the statute allows only nonprofit, inherent-risk releases. Commercial facilities are not covered. | A commercial facility in Michigan is exactly what the statute left out. |
| Texas | Munoz v. II Jaz Inc., 863 S.W.2d 207 (Tex. App. 1993) | An intermediate appellate decision. The Texas Supreme Court has not decided the question. | Treat parental waivers as unreliable here, and have counsel watch the question rather than assume it settled. |
| Illinois | Meyer v. Naperville Manner (Ill. App. 1994) | An equine statute provides a specific exception. | Outside that exception, parental releases have not been enforced. |
| Pennsylvania | Simmons v. Parkette National Gymnastic Training Ctr., 670 F. Supp. 140 (E.D. Pa. 1987) | A federal court predicting Pennsylvania law, not a state supreme court holding. | It is a prediction rather than a state holding. Plan as if it is right. |
| Florida (commercial, beyond inherent risks) | Kirton v. Fields (Fla. 2008, No. SC07-1739) | A commercial ATV park. Read together with Fla. Stat. 744.301(3), which reaches inherent risks only. | A commercial operator in Florida gets the statute's narrow inherent-risk presumption and nothing more. |
| Kentucky | Miller as Next Friend of E.M. v. House of Boom Kentucky, 575 S.W.3d 656 (Ky. 2019) | A commercial trampoline park, directly on point. | If you run a trampoline park, this is the case the other side's lawyer names first. |
Commonly miscounted
Some published charts count more states in the enforced column than the authority supports. Arizona’s statute, for example, is specific to equine activities (A.R.S. 12-553), and North Carolina’s support rests on a single federal district decision in a nonprofit context (Kelly v. United States, E.D.N.C. 2011): thin ground for a commercial facility. Where the authority is that thin, treat the question as open rather than answered.
Group three
Void outright
In a few states the minors analysis never even starts, because a statute or settled doctrine voids recreational liability waivers themselves, for adults and children alike. Fee-charging recreational operators in these states should assume the release clause in their waiver is unenforceable. New York leads the group.
| State | Authority | Scope and limits | What this means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | Gen. Oblig. Law 5-326 | Voids negligence exemptions in contracts, tickets, and memberships of pools, gymnasiums, and places of public amusement or recreation where the operator receives a fee. It bans the waiver, not assumption-of-risk defenses. | If you charge admission in New York, assume the release of negligence claims in your waiver is void, and plan to defend on the facts instead. |
| Virginia | Hiett v. Lake Barcroft (1992), common law | All pre-injury negligence releases, adults included. | The signature does not move the case. Your inspection and maintenance record does. |
| Louisiana | La. Civ. Code art. 2004; applied in Ramirez v. Fair Grounds (La. 1991) | Applied to void a pre-injury release. | Do not build a Louisiana defense on the waiver. |
| Montana | Mont. Code 28-2-702 | Among the statutes that void recreational waivers outright. | Assume the waiver is not your defense in Montana, and ask counsel what the statute leaves you. |
| Alaska (ski areas) | AS 05.45.120 | Bars ski-area releases for ski injuries, even though Alaska otherwise permits parental releases by statute. | Vertical-specific: an Alaska ski operation cannot rely on releases even where another facility type might. |
Group four
Not decided
In these states the adult question has a clear answer and the minors question has never reached the state’s highest court. They are listed because a chart that files them under one of the groups above is guessing, and because an operator whose state is simply absent concludes nobody looked.
| State | Authority | Scope and limits | What this means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nebraska | Sinu v. Concordia University, 313 Neb. 218 (2023); Palmer v. Lakeside Wellness Center, 281 Neb. 780 (2011) | Sinu enforced a release against a university athlete who signed at 18, alongside his mother. Nebraska's age of majority is 19, but a person of 18 who is not a ward of the state may already enter a binding contract, so his own signature bound him and the court never had to reach his mother's. | An adult's clearly worded release bars ordinary negligence, and Palmer applied the same rule to a commercial health club. It never reaches gross negligence or willful and wanton conduct. Whether a parent can waive the claim of a child genuinely under 18 is undecided in Nebraska. |
| Minnesota | Justice v. Marvel, LLC, 979 N.W.2d 894 (Minn. 2022) | An inflatable play centre. The court decided the case on how the form was written, not on whether a parent may waive at all. | A release saying “any and all claims” that mentions negligence only when describing other participants does not release the operator's own negligence. The parental question itself is still open. A separate Minnesota statute voids a minor's waiver for commercial inflatables and reaches nothing else, so a climbing wall or a trampoline park is outside it. |
| Connecticut | Hanks v. Powder Ridge Restaurant Corp., 276 Conn. 314 (2005), extended by Reardon v. Windswept Farm, LLC, 280 Conn. 153 (2006) | Both are adults releasing their own claims, at a snowtubing operation and a riding stable. Neither involved a minor. | Connecticut has no rule voiding releases outright. It applies a totality test that commercial recreational releases have so far failed, which for an operator lands close to the same place. The state's highest court has not decided whether a parent may waive a minor's claim. |
Arizona: the waiver does not end the case
Arizona sits outside all four groups because its rule is about who decides rather than what the release says. The state constitution provides that the defence of assumption of risk “shall, in all cases whatsoever, be a question of fact and shall, at all times, be left to the jury” (art. 18, sec. 5), and in Phelps v. Firebird Raceway, Inc., 210 Ariz. 403 (2005), the Supreme Court held that this reaches a signed release and not only the unwritten kind. A waiver still does work in Arizona, but a judge cannot end the case on it before trial: a jury weighs it. Budget for the case going further than it would elsewhere, and note that Arizona’s release statute is equine-specific, as above. Whether a parent may waive a minor’s claim in Arizona is a separate question this guide does not answer.
Read next
The discovery guide
If someone is injured and sues, the other side's lawyer sends a numbered demand for records. Most owners first see that list when it lands on them. Here it is in advance.
The waiver is page one. The record is the case.
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