Recently, a Long Island High School was slammed with a $12 million lawsuit due to an outbreak of a staph infection that affected five students on the district’s wrestling team last January. The suit alleges negligence on the grounds that the wrestling mats used by the team had not been replaced in seven years, and were not disinfected properly to protect the students from illness.
Additionally, the suit alleges that parents of the wrestlers were not given proper notice regarding the infections. Although generally curable with antibiotics, staph infections can be fatal if not properly treated, depending on the strain. In this case, the bacterial strain was MRSA- an infection leading to 11,285 deaths a year, according to the Center for Disease Control.