Federal Jury Awards $1,670,000 for Diabetic Detainee’s Preventable Death in Philadelphia Jail, YesCare Reaches Separate Confidential Settlement
by Chuck Sharman
In a verdict reached on March 4, 2026, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania awarded $1.5 million to the surviving sons of Louis Jung, Jr., 50, who died after receiving only sporadic treatment for his Type 1 diabetes during his 10-day incarceration with the Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP) at its Curran-Frumhold Correctional Facility (CFCF). Jurors made an additional award of $170,000 in punitive damages against PDP guard Lt. Wanda Bloodsaw, who ordered two fellow detainees to drag Jung back to his cell while he was dying of diabetic ketoacidosis.
Jung had been held at the jail since his December 2021 arrest on a robbery charge, his diabetes documented at intake. He was transferred to Norristown State Psychiatric Hospital for competency restoration in March 2023. Upon return to CCCF on October 28 that year, a nurse with the jail’s contracted medical provider, YesCare, measured his glucose level at 542, well above the 100 normally recorded between meals. But he was not taken to the infirmary nor an outside hospital. He died 10 days later on November 6, 2023.
With the help of attorneys from the Abolitionist Law Center (ALC) in Philadelphia, sons Jacob and John Jung filed suit in the district court on behalf of their dad’s estate in October 2024. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, they made claims against PDP and YesCare officials for their deliberate indifference to Jung’s serious medical need, in violation of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The complaint noted that YesCare, then known as Corizon Health, had committed when signing its 2021 contract with the PDP to follow protocols for treatment of diabetes that were established by the American Diabetic Association (ADA). For its part, the City had also committed to following ADA protocols in the 2003 settlement of Rosen v. Philadelphia, USDC (E.D. Pa.), Case No. 2:00-cv-00764.
Yet “[f]rom the start of his incarceration, PDP failed to develop a treatment plan” for Jung’s diabetes, “failed to provide necessary insulin, and failed to properly document [his] glucose levels and insulin dosage,” the complaint alleged. As a result, he was hospitalized for diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperglycemia on December 20, 2021, just four days after his arrest. Additional hospitalizations followed over the next year. But medical staff “inexplicably did not document [his] dosages of insulin,” meaning that “medical providers had no record of the amount of insulin being provided to their patient from one dosage to the next.” Jung’s glucose levels were supposed to be checked twice daily, but there was no way to check because there was no record kept of the levels that were observed.
The evening before he died, the complaint continued, Jung was unconscious “on the floor in the doorway of his cell” when staffers falsely recorded that he refused medication. Rather than summon help, Bloodsaw ordered two fellow detainees to drag Jung’s body back inside his cell, where he was found dead hours later. Given such explosive allegations, the case proceeded quickly to settlement negotiations. But only those with YesCare were successful, and it was dismissed in February 2026 after reaching an undocketed settlement. Claims against the City and PDP proceeded to a four-day trial, at the conclusion of which jurors returned their verdict for Plaintiffs. See: Jung v. Philadelphia, USDC (E.D. Pa.), Case No. 2:23-cv-05618.
The award adds pressure on the PDP to live up to promises made to settle another jail conditions suit, Remick v. Philadelphia, USDC (E.D. Pa.), Case No. 2:20-cv-01959. But as PLN reported, the City has already been found in contempt of the order adopting that agreement, and it was fined $25 million in July 2024. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.41.] Nevertheless, ALC attorney Nia Holston told MetroPhiladelphia, “This is a victory.”
“It cannot be understated how important it was to shed light on the horrors that have been happening at the [PDP],” she said, “and how people have suffered.”
Additional source: MetroPhiladelphia
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