If someone’s negligence caused your injury that results in cellulitis, you may be able to get compensation.
Cellulitis is a spreading bacterial infection of your skin and tissues under the skin. The two kinds of bacteria that usually cause cellulitis are Staphylococcus and Streptococcus.
Where Do You Get Cellulitis?
Occasionally cellulitis can pop up in places where you skin has broken open, like near a wound from surgery after an accident.
Cellulitis usually appears as warmth of the area, swelling, tenderness and redness.
The doctor will treat your cellulitis with antibiotics.
Tip: If you’re given antibiotics, save all of the bottles. Take a photo of the all of the bottles. Send it to the responsible party’s insurance company.
Cellulitis is an infection that affects the skin’s deeper layers, which are called the dermis and subcutaneous tissue. An image of them is below.
MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) may also cause cellulitis. Cellulitis may also be caused by other bacteria.
What Does Cellulitis Look Like?
As the red area starts to get bigger, you may get a fever, chills, tenderness, and swollen glands (lymph nodes) close to the infected skin.
Where Do You Get Cellulitis?
After surgery or a wound from an accident, you may get cellulitis in your chest or abdomen. If you have a wound in your skin that has redness, warmth, tenderness, pain or swelling, you may be getting cellulitis.
Can An Accident Cause Cellulitis?
Yes. Most often, cellulitis starts in the area of a break in the skin, like a cut or puncture wound. It may also develop near a wound where you had surgery.
Cellulitis may exist even if there is no break in your skin. It could be caused by a pre-existing health condition. The responsible party’s insurance company may argue that your cellulitis was caused by a prior health condition, and not the accident.
Your doctor will determine if the inflammation (cellulitis) is caused by an infection. He or she will ask you if you’ve had any trauma to your body. You could suffer trauma in a car accident or slip and fall.
If the bacteria can’t be killed by the selected antibiotics, you may need to get IV antibiotics at a hospital. This increases the full value of your case, in part, because your medical billed charges and out of pocket medical bills increase significantly.
If you were healthy before the accident, and you have a skin wound from the accident that results in cellulitis, your doctor should say that the accident caused the cellulitis.
How Much Is A Case Worth if You Have Cellulitis from an Accident?
If someone’s negligence caused your cellulitis, the settlement value of your case will depend upon how quickly the infection is wiped out.
Most cellulitis may be properly treated with antibiotics at home. In those cases, the case value may not be that big. (It still may be decent if you have other injuries. Many other factors may affect the value as well.)
If you’re hospitalized with intravenous antibiotics for cellulitis, the full value of the case goes up.
How Sepsis Affects Your Personal Injury Case
Sepsis is a complication of cellulitis. If your cellulitis isn’t cared for correctly, it may spread to your bloodstream and result in a serious bacterial infection of the bloodstream that spreads throughout your body. This is known as sepsis.
If you get sepsis that was caused by cellulitis from an accident, this greatly increases the full value of the case.
Let’s look at an actual personal injury case where the accident victim had cellulitis.
Jury Awards $800,000 for Tibial Plateau Fracture and Cellulitis
This isn’t my case. A jury awarded $800,000 to a 55-year-old female realtor who suffered a comminuted tibial plateau fracture with surgery (ORIF), resulting in cellulitis.
$600,000 was for pain and suffering. $200,000 was for future medical bills.
She said that she was cut off by a scooter that left the accident scene. She sued State Farm for her uninsured motorist (UM) insurance benefits.
The is a 2001 verdict.
My thoughts: I’m unsure as to how bad her cellulitis was. Thus, it’s tough to know how much of the pain and suffering award was for the tibia plateau fracture and how much of the award is for the cellulitis.
I also don’t know what future medical treatment the jury awarded her money for.
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