Virginia Minors Arbitration Ruling: Court of Appeals Says Children Can Be Bound to Arbitrate Injury Claims

Virginia minors can be held to arbitration agreements: the Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled on September 29, 2026, in a decision first reported on October 14, that a Fairfax County judge was wrong to hold that a child injured at Flight Adventure Park in Springfield could never be bound to arbitrate. The Virginia minors arbitration ruling removes a categorical shield that plaintiffs' lawyers had relied on, so the fight in child-injury cases now moves to whether the particular adult who signed had authority and whether the particular agreement is valid under ordinary contract law.

The case is Flight Fit N Fun (Springfield), LLC, d/b/a Flight Adventure Park v. M.D., Record No. 1269-25-4. According to the Virginia Lawyers Weekly digest of the opinion, the panel agreed with the park that a 207-year-old Supreme Court of Virginia decision, Britton v. Williams's Devisees, no longer states Virginia law because the General Assembly's 1986 arbitration statute requires arbitration agreements to be treated like any other contract. The decision matters well beyond trampoline parks. Youth sports leagues, summer camps, schools, ride-share and gaming platforms, and app developers all collect sign-ups for children, and many of those terms carry an Arbitration Clause that until now faced an argument in Virginia that minors were simply outside its reach.

What did the Virginia Court of Appeals decide in the minors arbitration ruling?

The court reversed the circuit court's order denying Flight Adventure Park's motion to compel arbitration. The circuit court had concluded that minors cannot be bound to an arbitration agreement as a matter of Virginia law. The Court of Appeals held that conclusion was error: as Virginia Lawyers Weekly summarized it, there is no general rule in Virginia that minors cannot be bound to arbitrate.

The holding is narrow in one sense and broad in another. It is narrow because, on the published summary, the court rejected a blanket rule rather than holding that this specific child is bound by this specific signature. It is broad because the blanket rule was the cleanest defense available to any Virginia minor facing a Motion to Compel Arbitration, and it is now gone.

Key identifiers for the decision:

Item	Detail
Caption	Flight Fit N Fun (Springfield), LLC, d/b/a Flight Adventure Park, et al. v. M.D., an infant who sues by her mother and next friend
Record number	1269-25-4
Court	Court of Appeals of Virginia (appeal from the Circuit Court of Fairfax County)
Argued	July 21, 2026, Arlington (Region 4 docket)
Decided	September 29, 2026
First reported	Virginia Lawyers Weekly, October 14, 2026
Author (per VLW)	Judge Lorish
Counsel (per VLW)	James L. Hoyle for the park (appellant); Logan W. Stuart for M.D. (appellee)
Statute applied	Virginia Uniform Arbitration Act, Va. Code § 8.01-581.01 et seq.
Precedent displaced	Britton v. Williams's Devisees, 20 Va. (6 Munf.) 453 (1819)

The case: a trampoline-park injury and a signature by an accompanying adult

M.D., a minor, was injured at Flight Adventure Park's Springfield location and sued the operator in Fairfax County Circuit Court. The court's argument calendar lists her as suing through her mother and next friend, Ardo Mohamed, which is the standard way a Virginia minor brings a tort claim.

The park moved to compel arbitration. Its theory, as the digest describes it, was that M.D. was bound by an arbitration agreement signed on her behalf by Mako Barre, an adult who accompanied her to the park. The published materials do not identify the injury, the full text of the agreement, or the relationship between Barre and the child. That last fact is not a detail. Whether an adult other than a parent or legal guardian can commit a child to anything is the question that will decide whether this particular plaintiff ends up in arbitration.

The circuit court never reached that question. It held that a minor cannot be bound to an arbitration agreement at all, regardless of who signed. That ruling is what the park appealed, and it is what the Court of Appeals reversed.

The appeal reached the Court of Appeals rather than the Supreme Court of Virginia because of two features of Virginia procedure. First, Va. Code § 8.01-581.016 lets a party appeal immediately from an order denying a motion to compel arbitration, an exception to the usual final-judgment rule that mirrors Section 16 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). Second, since 2022 the Court of Appeals has heard appeals of right in civil cases, a jurisdictional change the digest flagged in the opinion's discussion of how the appeal was taken.

Why did the court say Britton v. Williams's Devisees is no longer good law?

Britton v. Williams's Devisees, 20 Va. (6 Munf.) 453, was decided by the Supreme Court of Virginia in 1819. According to Virginia Lawyers Weekly, both sides briefed it extensively, and the park argued that Britton's conclusion that minors cannot be bound to an arbitration agreement is no longer good law. The panel agreed.

The reasoning, as reported, runs through the Virginia Uniform Arbitration Act, enacted in 1986. Its core provision, now Va. Code § 8.01-581.01, makes a written agreement to arbitrate an existing controversy, or a contract clause to arbitrate future controversies, "valid, enforceable and irrevocable, except upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract." That is the same equal-treatment principle the Supreme Court of the United States reads into Section 2 of the FAA. A rule that singles out arbitration agreements, and only arbitration agreements, as beyond a minor's capacity treats them differently from other contracts. The court therefore concluded the Britton rule had been superseded by statute.

Two consequences follow. The first is that ordinary Virginia contract law on minors now governs. Under the common-law rule Virginia follows, a minor's contract is generally voidable rather than void, and the minor may disaffirm it within a reasonable time after turning 18. Those defenses survive, because they apply to "any contract." The second is that the FAA Preemption question, which some courts elsewhere have used to strike arbitration-specific rules, did not need to be reached on the published summary: the state statute itself did the work.

Can a minor be bound by an arbitration agreement in Virginia?

Yes, after this ruling a minor can be bound by an arbitration agreement in Virginia, but only if the agreement is valid under the same contract rules that govern any other contract a minor or someone acting for a minor signs. The decision removes the categorical bar; it does not create a presumption that every waiver form at a front desk binds every child who walks past it.

The more important distinction for Virginia practitioners is between an arbitration clause and a liability release. In Hiett v. Lake Barcroft Community Association, 244 Va. 191, 418 S.E.2d 894 (1992), the Supreme Court of Virginia held that a pre-injury release of liability for personal injury caused by negligence is void as against public policy. The plaintiff there was a triathlete rendered quadriplegic after diving into Lake Barcroft during the swim leg; the entry form's release did not bar his suit. Virginia is one of a small number of states with that rule, and it applies to adults and children alike.

Put the two rulings together and the Virginia position for a recreation-facility waiver signed for a child looks like this:

• The release-of-liability paragraph is void under Hiett. The child's negligence claim survives.
• The arbitration paragraph is not void merely because the claimant is a minor. Whether it binds the child depends on authority, assent, scope and ordinary contract defenses such as Unconscionability.

That is the same split the New Jersey Supreme Court drew in Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park, 187 N.J. 323 (2006): a parent may agree to arbitrate a child's future tort claims, which the court treated as a choice of forum, but may not release those claims. The practical effect is that the claim stays alive and changes venue. For a plaintiff's lawyer, that is a meaningful loss of leverage (no jury, limited discovery, limited appeal) but not a loss of the case.

Can a parent or another adult sign an arbitration agreement for a child?

The Flight Adventure Park decision, as reported, does not answer that question for Virginia, and it is the next fight. Three theories are usually offered to bind a non-signing child, and courts across the country treat them differently:

1. Agency or parental authority. The adult signed as the child's agent or natural guardian. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court rejected inherent parental authority to waive a child's judicial forum in 2025. New Jersey and Florida accepted it for parents. Few courts have extended authority to a non-parent companion such as a friend's parent, a coach or a babysitter without some evidence of actual authorization.
2. Third-party beneficiary. The child is the intended beneficiary of a contract the adult signed (here, access to the park) and so takes it subject to its arbitration term. Pennsylvania's Superior Court noted the theory in Santiago but did not decide on it.
3. Equitable estoppel. A non-signatory who sues on the contract or knowingly takes its benefits cannot avoid its arbitration clause. The Ninth Circuit refused to apply estoppel in B.F. v. Amazon.com, No. 20-35359 (Apr. 23, 2021), because the children's statutory privacy claims did not depend on their parents' Alexa terms. A negligence claim for an injury on premises is similarly independent of the admission contract, which tends to cut against estoppel in tort cases.

Because the agreement in this case was signed by an accompanying adult rather than, on the face of the digest, the mother who is the next friend, the authority question is likely to be contested on remand.

How do other states treat arbitration agreements signed for minors?

There is no national consensus. The Virginia minors arbitration ruling adds a state to the column that rejects a blanket bar. The table below summarizes the leading decisions on parental and third-party signatures for children.

Jurisdiction	Decision	Year	Who signed	Arbitration enforced against the minor?	Pre-injury release enforced?
Virginia	Flight Fit N Fun (Springfield) v. M.D. (Ct. App.)	2026	Accompanying adult	No categorical bar; enforceability turns on contract law	No (Hiett, 1992)
Pennsylvania	Santiago v. Philly Trampoline Park (Sup. Ct.)	2025	One parent	No: parents lack inherent authority to waive a child's judicial forum; one parent's signature does not bind the other	Not reached
New Jersey	Hojnowski v. Vans Skate Park (Sup. Ct.)	2006	Parent	Yes, absent fraud, duress, unconscionability or ambiguity	No
New Jersey	Matullo v. Skyzone Trampoline Park (App. Div.)	2022	The minor himself (misstated age)	No: the minor disaffirmed and the park could not show reasonable reliance	Not reached
Florida	Global Travel Marketing v. Shea (Sup. Ct.)	2005	Parent	Yes, in a commercial travel contract	Not reached
Federal (9th Cir., Wash. law)	B.F. v. Amazon.com (unpublished)	2021	Parents (Alexa terms)	No: estoppel did not reach independent statutory claims	Not applicable
Federal (9th Cir., Cal. law)	Shanahan v. IXL Learning (unpublished)	2026	Schools for students	Agency rejected; ratification theory revived and remanded	Not applicable

Two of these deserve a closer look. Santiago, decided September 25, 2025 with a companion case against Sky Zone, is the high-water mark for minors: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court treated a parent's signature on a trampoline-park arbitration form as a forfeiture of a minor's judicial protections that is unenforceable without court approval. That reasoning tied the result to the court-supervised protections Pennsylvania gives minors in litigation. Virginia has a comparable procedure, Va. Code § 8.01-424, which requires court approval of a compromise of a claim belonging to a person under a disability, including a minor. The Court of Appeals' reported reasoning, grounded in the equal-treatment command of the 1986 statute, points away from importing Santiago's court-approval rationale into arbitration enforcement, though the summary does not say whether the panel addressed it.

Global Travel Marketing v. Shea is the strongest authority on the other side. An 11-year-old boy on safari in Botswana with his mother was dragged from his tent and killed by hyenas; his father sued for wrongful death in Broward County, and the travel company invoked an arbitration clause the mother had signed. Florida's Fourth District refused to compel arbitration (870 So. 2d 20 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003)), but the Florida Supreme Court quashed that decision in 2005, holding the arbitration provision in a commercial travel contract was neither unconscionable nor void as against public policy.

What happens next in the Flight Adventure Park case?

The case returns to the Fairfax County Circuit Court unless the plaintiff seeks review in the Supreme Court of Virginia. On remand, the questions the circuit court skipped become live:

• Authority. Could the accompanying adult bind M.D.? If the adult was not a parent or guardian, the park needs evidence of actual or apparent authorization from the parent.
• Assent and formation. Was the agreement properly presented and signed, and does it clearly cover personal injury claims? The New Jersey courts in Matullo looked closely at how front-desk staff handled the forms.
• Disaffirmance. Whether a minor, or a next friend acting for her, can disaffirm a contract signed by someone else on the minor's behalf is unsettled in Virginia and could become the plaintiff's principal argument.
• Severability and scope. If the release language is void under Hiett, the park will argue the arbitration clause is severable. A Severability Clause in the form helps the park; its absence helps the plaintiff.
• Delegation. If the form incorporates provider rules that send arbitrability questions to the arbitrator, the park may argue a Delegation Clause assigns some of these issues to the arbitrator rather than the court.

A further appeal is possible. A ruling that displaces an 1819 decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia on a recurring issue is the kind of question the state's highest court sometimes takes, and the Pennsylvania split gives a petition an obvious hook.

What the Virginia minors arbitration ruling means for mass arbitration and consumer platforms

The decision arose from a single personal injury case, but its most significant reach may be in consumer technology. Gaming, social media and education platforms enroll millions of minors under click-through terms that include arbitration and Class Action Waiver provisions. In mass-arbitration practice, claimant pools against those companies often include minors, and plaintiffs' firms have used minority both to avoid arbitration and to keep claims in court. The Roblox and Epic Games litigation, and the federal decisions in Williams v. Moon Active (N.D. Cal. Dec. 9, 2025), which held that a minor's wholesale disaffirmance of a contract was a validity question for the arbitrator under a delegation clause, show how contested the area is.

For Virginia-law disputes, the categorical argument is now off the table. Claimants' counsel will instead need to rely on disaffirmance, lack of authority, unconscionability or federal estoppel limits. For companies, the ruling marginally strengthens the case for routing minors through arbitration, which in turn affects exposure to Mass Arbitration fees: every enforceable clause that captures a minor's claim is a claim that can be filed as an individual Demand for Arbitration, with the per-case fee consequences that follow.

What it means for personal injury firms, operators and drafters

For PI firms representing injured children in Virginia. Expect motions to compel in recreation, camp and youth-sports cases that previously settled or proceeded in court on the strength of the minority argument. Early discovery should target who signed, in what capacity, and how the form was presented. The Hiett rule remains intact, so a waiver does not end the claim; the battle is over forum.

For trampoline parks, camps and youth-activity operators. A clause signed by a parent or legal guardian, presented clearly and separately from any release language, with a severability provision, is now far more likely to be enforced in Virginia than a form signed by whichever adult brought the child. Operators that accept signatures from non-parent companions face the authority question this case will now test.

For drafters of consumer and platform terms. Consider express parental-consent flows, a clear statement of which claims are covered, and attention to the provider's minimum standards. Drafters should also weigh the cost side: a clause that reliably captures minors' claims expands the population that can be organized into a mass filing.

For defendants in multistate matters. The split with Pennsylvania means choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses now matter more in child-injury cases. A clause selecting Virginia law will not carry the same risk as one selecting Pennsylvania law.

This analysis describes the reported decision and the surrounding law; it is not legal advice, and the slip opinion should be consulted before relying on any characterization of its reasoning.

FAQ

Can a minor be bound by an arbitration agreement in Virginia?

Yes. Under the Court of Appeals' September 29, 2026 decision in Flight Fit N Fun (Springfield) v. M.D., there is no general rule in Virginia that minors cannot be bound to arbitrate; enforceability turns on ordinary contract principles, including who signed and with what authority.

What did the Virginia Court of Appeals decide in the Flight Adventure Park case?

It reversed a Fairfax County Circuit Court order that refused to compel arbitration of a child's injury suit on the ground that minors cannot be bound to arbitration agreements, holding that ruling was error.

Why did the court say Britton v. Williams's Devisees is no longer good law?

Because the 1986 Virginia Uniform Arbitration Act, Va. Code § 8.01-581.01, makes arbitration agreements enforceable on the same terms as other contracts, and a rule barring only minors' arbitration agreements treats arbitration differently, so the 1819 rule was superseded.

Is a trampoline park liability waiver enforceable against a child in Virginia?

No for the release itself: Hiett v. Lake Barcroft (1992) voids pre-injury releases of personal injury claims in Virginia. The arbitration clause in the same form is assessed separately and, after this ruling, is not void simply because the claimant is a minor.

How do other states treat arbitration agreements signed for minors?

They split. New Jersey (Hojnowski, 2006) and Florida (Shea, 2005) let parents bind children to arbitrate, while Pennsylvania (Santiago, 2025) holds parents lack inherent authority to waive a child's judicial forum.

What happens next in the Flight Adventure Park case?

Absent further appeal, the Fairfax court must now decide whether the accompanying adult had authority to bind the child, whether the agreement was validly formed and covers the claim, and whether any disaffirmance or unconscionability defense applies.