A woman says she suffered a broken hip after she was hit by a child who slipped past a “no running” sign at a Sky Zone branch. She sued the trampoline park for failing to enforce its own rules.
The lawsuit alleges that on March 19, 2024, at around 7:30 p.m., Maria Alanis Ruiz, a well-known Latino activist and scholar in Oregon, was accidentally knocked to the ground while picking up her granddaughter at the Beaverton Sky Zone.
Ruiz, 78, needed a right hip replacement after a fall and now walks with a painful limp, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit seeks $3 million in damages from the Sky Zone chain, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Civil attorney Austin Neff said his client, Ruiz, was walking past stadium-style seating at the edge of the playground when the incident occurred. Ruiz was trying to tell her granddaughter it was time to go home when she was “run over” by the overly excited skydiver, attorneys said Friday.
Neff, who grew up in the area, called the trampoline park a “chaos zone” where rules against running were ignored.
“Kids will be kids. Everybody understands that,” Neff said, “but when a place like this doesn’t have enough trained staff to enforce its own safety rules, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Ruiz, formerly an avid gardener, was unable to resume many of her favorite activities after the surgery, such as tending rose bushes and cooking tamales and other meals for her family, attorneys said.
Ruiz co-founded Portland’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the 1980s and helped establish the Chicanx/Latinx Studies program at Portland State University, where she worked for more than three decades, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported.
She also helped found the Portland-Guadalajara Sister Cities Association.
“This case will force Sky Zone to reflect and re-examine their security practices,” Neff said.
The lawsuit was filed March 9 in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
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