Trampoline park leaves 11 people with broken backs
Owners had a ‘cavalier’ approach to safety at site where hundreds of visitors were sent to hospital
THE owners of a trampoline park where 11 people broke their backs and hundreds more were injured have been fined and ordered to do community service.
David Elliot Shuttleworth, 34, and Matthew Melling, 33, were the directors of Flip Out Chester, where a customer was injured a day after it opened and 270 were hurt before it closed down two months later. Some suffered “life-changing” spinal injuries and the number of people taken to A&E at the local hospital led to a delegation of medics visiting the site to see what was going on, Chester Crown Court heard.
Customers, including many children, were injured after using the Tower Jump, where people landed in a foam pit. There was a “cavalier” approach to safety, the court heard, despite multiple people being injured on a daily basis. The worst injured suffered damaged vertebrae, some resulting in life-long health problems, while many others suffered “knee to face” injuries causing dental and facial injuries.
Shuttleworth, of Stoke on Trent, and Melling, of Spinningfields, Manchester, both pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a single count of negligence under health and safety law between December 2016 and February 2017.
Judge Michael Leeming said he was passing sentence on the basis the two defendants were negligent rather than committing deliberate acts or cost-cutting at the expense of safety and he was constrained by the sentencing guidelines and the law. He said: “There’s no evidence the company took any steps at all, including reasonably practical ones, to reduce or eliminate those risks. Common sense says investigating why an accident has happened reduces the risk of further accidents.”
Shuttleworth was fined £6,500 and Melling £6,300, with each ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid community service. Shuttleworth was also ordered to pay £50,000 costs and Melling £10,000 costs. Earlier, the court heard both men had run a franchise business, Flip Out Stoke, and on Dec 10 2016 opened Flip Out Chester, which had 200,000 customers in the two months it was open. But a day after opening one person was injured using the Tower Jump, a feature where customers could jump from a height of up to 5.3m (17ft 3in) into a foam pit below, which presented a “risk of harm” to anyone using it, the court heard.
Between the day of opening until Feb 3 2017, 270 members of the public suffered injuries using the Tower Jump, 11 suffering spinal injuries, four requiring surgery, with 123 injured by knee to face contact along with various other injuries including broken ribs and sprained wrists. On Jan 6, a staff member broke a vertebrae after jumping from the tower.
Despite the injuries, the business continued to operate, the court heard.
‘There’s no evidence the company took any steps at all to reduce or eliminate those risks’
On a single day, Feb 1 2017, three people suffered back injuries, all being taken to the Countess of Chester Hospital in the city. Staff there were monitoring A&E admissions from Flip Out and decided they had to act. Medics sent a letter to the trampoline park and a delegation of senior doctors visited two days later. The local council was also alerted and an investigation launched with the Tower Jump closed on Feb 3 2017.
Judge Leeming said Shuttleworth had the “unfortunate” attitude which suggested minor injuries “go with the territory” at a trampoline park.
Both former directors, now both earning around £80,000 working as business consultants, had been “chastened” by the investigation and prosecution, the court heard.
The defendants’ company, Shuttleworth and Melling Ltd, went into liquidation in 2021. A number of personal injury claims are being pursued or have already been settled.