Key Points

  • Non-signatory affiliates named as "protected parties" in a trampoline park's release and indemnity agreement are third-party beneficiaries who may invoke the agreement's arbitration provision.
  • Whether a non-signatory may invoke an arbitration agreement is a question for courts, not the arbitrator, despite a clause delegating arbitrability to the arbitrator.
  • A parent's signature on the release binds the minor child under the Family Code, without resort to direct-benefits estoppel.
  • A minor who accepted the benefit of entering the park cannot disavow the agreement by filing suit.
  • The court of appeals' judgment compelling arbitration as to Beaumont Urban Air is final because the plaintiff did not timely petition for review; the case returns to the trial court.

The Supreme Court of Texas held Friday that three companies and two individuals tied to an Urban Air trampoline park in Beaumont can send a girl's injury lawsuit to arbitration, even though they never signed the release her mother completed before the child entered the park.

In an unsigned per curiam opinion issued without oral argument, the court reversed part of a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District of Texas. That court had ordered arbitration of the claims against the park, Beaumont Adventure Park Urban Air LLC. It had also held that UATP Management, LLC; UATP IP, LLC; UA Attractions, LLC; Rachelle Nurse-Goodly; and Joseph Goodly had no contractual right to compel arbitration.

Under the decision, affiliates that a release names as its beneficiaries may invoke the release's arbitration clause even when that clause does not list them. The court reasoned that "arbitration is the parties' chosen means of enforcing the agreement's release and indemnification provision." It also held that a parent's signature binds a child to such an agreement, and that a child who has used the park cannot later disavow the contract on the ground that she is a minor.

Chiniqua Geter sued on behalf of her minor daughter, identified in the opinion as K.G., for injuries K.G. sustained while playing at the park. Before entering the play area, Geter signed a release and indemnification agreement in favor of Beaumont Urban Air on K.G.'s behalf. Its release and indemnity provision identified the affiliated companies and individuals as "protected parties" that Geter "releases, agrees not to sue, and shall indemnify."

The agreement also contained an arbitration provision covering, among other matters, "[a]ny dispute or claim arising out of or relating to this Agreement, breach thereof, the Premises, Activities, property damage (real or personal), personal injury (including death)." Such disputes, the clause said, "shall be . . . settled by binding arbitration before a single arbitrator" under the Federal Arbitration Act.

The park and the protected parties moved to compel arbitration, and the trial court denied the motion. On interlocutory appeal, the court of appeals ordered arbitration as to Beaumont Urban Air under the direct-benefits estoppel doctrine. The appellate court held that the protected parties could not compel arbitration because they had not signed the agreement and the doctrine does not apply to claims that "exist independently of the contract." It observed that the arbitration clause did not mention them.

Geter did not timely file a petition challenging the court of appeals' judgment, so the judgment in favor of Beaumont Urban Air is final, the court noted in a footnote. It said it addressed the agreement's validity "only insofar as it affects the protected parties' appeal."

The court first held that K.G. is bound, and that direct-benefits estoppel was unnecessary to reach that result. "The arbitration agreement binds K.G. because Geter signed it on K.G.'s behalf as her parent as Texas law permits," the court wrote. It relied on its 2023 decision in Taylor Morrison of Texas, Inc. v. Ha, which recognized that the Family Code gives parents the right to make "decisions of substantial legal significance" concerning their children. In Ha, the court explained, estoppel was needed because the children's father had not signed the home-purchase agreement on their behalf.

Geter argued that K.G., as a minor, could disavow the contract and had done so by filing suit. The court agreed that a contract obligating a minor is "voidable at the election of the minor," citing its 1973 decision in Dairyland County Mutual Insurance Co. of Texas v. Roman. But it invoked the corollary from the same case that a minor "is not permitted to retain the benefits of a contract while repudiating its obligations." The court wrote that "K.G. lost any ability to disavow the agreement upon gaining entry to the trampoline park."

The court then turned to the protected parties' own threshold argument. They contended that the court of appeals should not have decided whether they could enforce the agreement, because the agreement delegates questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator. The court disagreed.

Citing its 2025 decision in Cerna ex rel. R.W. v. Pearland Urban Air, LLC, the court said that whether a party that did not sign an agreement may compel arbitration under it "raises the question of whether an agreement to arbitrate exists between those parties." Courts decide that question. "We hold that it is for the courts, not an arbitrator, to decide whether the non-signatory protected parties may invoke the agreement," the court wrote.

On the merits of that question, the court looked to contract principles. Its 2018 decision in Jody James Farms, JV v. Altman Group, Inc. lists six ways a contract may reach nonsignatories, including third-party beneficiary status, which the protected parties claimed. Under that precedent, the contracting parties' intent to benefit a third party "must be clearly and fully spelled out or enforcement by the third party must be denied."

Geter argued that the indemnity provision did not make the protected parties beneficiaries of the arbitration provision, because that provision did not separately include them. The protected parties responded that the dispute-resolution clauses, including the arbitration provision, are the mechanisms for enforcing the release and indemnity the agreement gave them. The court sided with the protected parties.

The provision naming them "demonstrates the parties' intent to benefit these entities," the court wrote. It added that the arbitration provision "applies to undefined 'parties' and does not exclude the protected parties named elsewhere in the agreement." Reading the contract as a whole, the court concluded that "the protected parties may enforce the arbitration agreement as third-party beneficiaries."

The court granted the petition for review and reversed the portion of the court of appeals' judgment that affirmed the denial of arbitration as to the protected parties. The rest of the appellate judgment, which went unchallenged, remains in effect. The court remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.