Federal Jury Awards $25 Million to Jail Detainee Over an Untreated Blood Clot That Cost Him His Leg
After trial: The district court denied NaphCare's post-trial motions for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial and remittitur, so the full $25 million stood when the case left the district court. NaphCare filed a notice of appeal in August 2025 and the appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remained pending as of this writing. The verdict has not been reduced, and no state damage cap applies: Tapia's claim was brought under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 for a federal constitutional violation, and Washington does not cap personal injury damages generally. Whether NaphCare has paid any part of the verdict has not been publicly reported while the appeal is pending. Ryan Dreveskracht and Corinne Sebren also represented Tapia at trial; sources identify them as Galanda Broadman attorneys at the time of trial, so the result is credited here to Edwin Budge alone. Reports differ on the length of the trial, with the court's own order describing a nine-day jury trial and news coverage calling it ten days, so no figure is given above.
Won by Budge & Heipt, PLLC.
Javier Tapia was 42 when a blood clot went unaddressed for weeks during his 2018 incarceration at the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Washington, leading to gangrene and the amputation of his leg below the knee. Tapia sued Pierce County and its jail medical contractor, NaphCare, Inc., alleging deliberate indifference to his medical needs under the Fourteenth Amendment. Pierce County settled separately for $1 million and was dismissed before trial. In April 2025, after a jury trial in Seattle, a federal jury found NaphCare liable and awarded Tapia $5 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages, a total of $25 million. The district court denied NaphCare's post-trial motions, and NaphCare has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
What happened
Javier Tapia was booked into the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Washington, in June 2018 on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. He was 42. By September, jail records show him refusing meals and appearing confused and nonverbal. He was placed in a segregated cell, and his lawyers told the jury that nurses did not so much as open his chart for the next ten days. A blood clot was forming in his leg the entire time, and no one caught it.
The clot went untreated long enough that his foot began to turn black. A corrections deputy noticed it in early October 2018, and Tapia was taken that day to Tacoma General Hospital. Doctors diagnosed phlegmasia cerulea dolens, a severe form of deep vein thrombosis, and found the foot gangrenous. It could not be saved. Surgeons amputated Tapia's leg below the knee on October 16, 2018.
Tapia sued Pierce County and NaphCare, Inc., the Alabama company the county paid to run medical care at the jail, in federal court in 2022. Both defendants moved to dismiss, arguing they could not be liable for a condition they had not noticed. The court disagreed, writing that despite repeated contact with Tapia over his first three months in custody, 'no one thought to physically examine him,' and that whether that was reasonable was a question for a jury. The case survived that motion and two more rounds of pretrial challenges. Pierce County settled separately for $1 million and was dismissed from the case in March 2025, shortly before trial against NaphCare began.
The claim against NaphCare went to trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. Tapia's trial team included Ryan Dreveskracht and Corinne Sebren of the Seattle firm Galanda Broadman, along with Ed Budge of Budge & Heipt. They argued NaphCare built its jail medical staffing around licensed practical nurses working beyond their training, left corrections deputies rather than medical staff to flag emergencies, and failed to communicate internally as Tapia's condition worsened.
On April 4, 2025, after more than eight hours of deliberation, the jury ruled for Tapia. It found that NaphCare maintained a widespread, longstanding custom of inadequate medical care that violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to treatment while in custody, and that the custom caused his amputation. The jury awarded $5 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages, a total of $25 million.
NaphCare, which staffs jail medical units in 49 states, said after the verdict that it fundamentally disagreed with the outcome and would appeal. The district court denied its post-trial motions for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial and remittitur, and in August 2025 NaphCare filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The MacArthur Justice Center took over as Tapia's counsel on appeal, briefing finished in early 2026, and the appeal remained pending as of this writing. No payment toward the verdict has been publicly reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Prison Legal News, April 2025: procedural history, the Pierce County $1 million settlement and dismissal, and Edwin S. Budge of Budge & Heipt joining as counsel
- 2.OPB, April 7, 2025: verdict date and breakdown ($5 million compensatory, $20 million punitive), and the jail timeline leading to amputation
- 3.Corrections1: confirms verdict amount, venue, the phlegmasia cerulea dolens diagnosis, and NaphCare's stated intent to appeal
- 4.USA Herald, April 8, 2025: names Ed Budge of Budge & Heipt alongside Ryan Dreveskracht and Corinne Sebren of Galanda Broadman as Tapia's trial counsel, and trial length
- 5.CourtListener/RECAP docket, Tapia v. NaphCare Inc, No. 2:22-cv-01141 (W.D. Wash.): trial, the order denying NaphCare's Rule 50(b) and Rule 59 motions for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial and remittitur, and the August 25, 2025 notice of appeal
- 6.MacArthur Justice Center (Tapia's appellate counsel), case page: appeal status, with the answering brief filed February 4, 2026 and the appeal pending
More proven verdicts from Budge & Heipt, PLLC
All Budge & Heipt, PLLC proven verdicts →A federal jury in Spokane awarded $26.75 million to the estate of Cindy Lou Hill, a 55-year-old woman who died of a perforated intestine in the Spokane County Jail after NaphCare staff attributed her symptoms to heroin withdrawal, though the Ninth Circuit vacated the $24 million punitive portion in 2025 and the case was dismissed on remand.
Joshua McLemore, 29, died on August 10, 2021, after 20 days locked alone in a padded isolation cell at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, Indiana, where he had been booked during a psychotic episode linked to untreated schizophrenia. He lost about 45 pounds and, according to the federal complaint, slept roughly 15 hours in total over those three weeks before jail staff sent him to a hospital; he was transferred to a Cincinnati hospital and died there of multiple organ failure. His aunt sued Jackson County, the sheriff and jail staff in federal court on behalf of his estate, and in December 2023 the county's $7.25 million settlement was made public, reported as the largest known payout over a jail death in Indiana. Separate claims against the jail's outsourced medical provider were not part of that settlement.
Terrill Thomas, a 38-year-old Milwaukee man with a history of bipolar disorder, died of dehydration in the Milwaukee County Jail in April 2016 after a jail lieutenant ordered the water to his cell shut off for a week as punishment for flooding a previous cell. He lost 34 pounds before he was found dead on April 24, 2016. His estate sued Milwaukee County and the jail's medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services, in federal court, and the case settled in March 2019 for $6.75 million, split $5 million from the county and $1.75 million from Armor. The money was divided among Thomas's six children, several of them minors.
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