by Robert Haughn

A federal jury awarded a $307.6 million verdict to a former Michigan prisoner who said he suffered for two years in prison because Corizon Health Inc., the prison’s private the healthcare contractor, refused to give him an essential surgery to reverse his colostomy. It is the largest verdict against a prison or jail healthcare contractor in U.S. history, according to lead attorney Jonathan F. Marko of Marko Law PLLC in Detroit. However, it was unclear how much might be recovered from Corizon, which has now reorganized and put such liabilities in a new firm, Tehum Care Services, that has declared bankruptcy, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2024, p.29.]

Former prisoner Kohchise Jackson originally filed the suit against Corizon in 2019. In the suit, Jackson alleged that his Fourteenth and Eighteenth Amendment rights were violated while he was in custody at St. Clair County Correctional Facility from May 2016 to March 23, 2017 and a prisoner held by the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) from March 23, 2017 to May 16, 2019.

In the suit, Jackson said that, in 2016, he developed a colovesical fistula, a hole in the tissue that separates the bladder from the large intestine. This caused bowel contents to escape from his large intestine into his bladder, causing “bladder infections, urinary tract infections, high fevers, chills, nausea, vomiting, and extreme pain.”

Jackson claims that he raised this issue to staff but was only diagnosed with a urinary tract infection despite showing symptoms for other conditions. Eventually, in December 2016, he was taken to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a colovesical fistula in February 2017. However, the surgery was not carried out on the basis of it not being considered “life-threatening” by the facility coordinator at St. Clair, Colleen Marie Spencer, a named defendant in the suit. He was later transferred to DOC in March 2017. Jackson’s complaint claims the surgery was postponed to pass the cost of the surgery over to the DOC.

When at DOC, Jackson alleges that Corizon did not perform his colostomy reversal because it was deemed “not medically necessary.” Jackson was not given the surgery during his stay at DOC, which lasted two years and two months.

Jackson eventually received his surgery. After being paroled on May 16, 2019, he enrolled in Michigan’s Medicaid program, the Healthy Michigan Plan. He was able to obtain an appointment on May 31, 2019 at the Detroit Medical Center. The complaint claims that “Corizon’s intransigence ultimately resulted in Michigan taxpayers, rather than Corizon, bearing the cost of Plaintiff’s surgery.”

Jackson claimed that this resulted in him suffering extensive pain and humiliation during his sentence. He alleges that the healthcare services did not provide enough colostomy bags and patches that were appropriately sized, and as a result “watery excrement and digestive juices would leak out of the stoma and onto his body, bedding, and clothes.”

Jackson claimed that his rights to access to adequate medical treatment for pretrial detainees under the Fourteenth Amendment were violated, claiming that Spencer’s postponement constituted a constitutional violation. Jackson also claimed that Corizon’s treatment of him constituted “deliberate indifference” toward his health, which violated his Eight Amendment rights. Jackson cited his quick surgery and recovery after being released from prison as evidence of this.

The jury ruled in favor of Jackson. The court issued $300 million to be paid in punitive damages by Corizon and $100,000 to be paid by Dr. Keith Papendick for “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Jackson was also given $7.5 million by the court in compensatory damages. In addition to Marko and co-counsel from his firm, Michael L. Jones and Allie J. Farris, Jackson was represented by Ann Arbor attorneys Ian T. Cross and Michael J. Margolis. See: Jackson v. Corizon Health, USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 2:19-cv-13382.