The family of a 3-year-old Longview boy who died in an accident involving a large inflatable toy in 2007 is trying to track down the equipment’s manufacturer and distributor, but the Florida company keeps changing its name, perhaps in an effort to avoid liability, a Longview attorney said.

Rebecca and Craig Pierce filed a wrongful death suit in late 2008 after their son, Jacob Pierce, was killed at Hoppin' House, a Castle Rock indoor playground that included inflatable equipment for kids to bounce on.

The boy had been attending a party at the business Dec. 15, 2007, when two adults playing on one of the inflatable toys fell on him, causing him to strike his head on the floor, according to authorities. Jacob suffered a skull fracture and brain injury and was pronounced dead at St. John Medical Center.

The Pierces’ lawsuit names Hoppin' House; the business’s owners, Kimberly and Larry Hoff; the inflatable toy’s manufacturer; and the two men who fell on their son, Joseph Milian and Shane Rodriguez Torres. The suit does not ask for specific monetary damages.

Documents filed in Cowlitz County Superior Court show that the Hoffs, who shut down the business after the incident, had no commercial insurance, nor did they have the proper state permits for the play equipment. Both were required by law.

Without insurance, the Hoffs wouldn’t be able to pay damages in the suit, nor can they pay their legal fees, according to their attorney, Bruce White of Portland.

“It’s just unfortunate that they let their business insurance lapse,” said White, who called the situation “an oversight more than anything else.”

White also said Friday that state inspections are “pretty cursory” and “wouldn’t change anything about the way the equipment operated or was utilized.”

“The Hoffs were kind of caught between a rock and hard place,” he said. “They could make some pretty good arguments that they didn’t do anything wrong.”

Mark Brumbaugh, the Longview attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the Pierces, said he is not interested in going after the Hoffs’ personal assets and will now seek a judgment against the Florida company that manufactured and distributed the inflatable equipment.

“Our primary goal is to recover full compensation from the manufacturer,” Brumbaugh said in a recent interview.

The company, he said, is “the most likely entity that would have assets to satisfy the damages.”

The Florida company has been served with papers in the case but has ignored the lawsuit, he said. In addition, Brumbaugh said the manufacturer operates under at least five different names, making it difficult to pin down.

“It just isn’t altogether clear who the manufacturer is, who the distributors are,” Brumbaugh said. “It would appear that they’ve … dissolved and incorporated under several different names.

“It’s not an unusual tactic to try and avoid liability,” he said.

The Pierce’s lawsuit lists the toy’s manufacturer and distributor as Quality Inflatables, Quality Inflatable Innovations, Activity Games, or a combination of those names. A Web search of the companies leads in most cases back to a single Web site, which lists an address in Kissimmee, Fla.

A man who was reached at the company’s phone number Friday said he worked in the business’s warehouse and that a manager was not available to talk about the lawsuit.

“You would certainly hope that they would step up and defend themselves rather than try and avoid the obligation,” Brumbaugh said.