A federal jury in Detroit yesterday hit private prison health-care providers and a physician with a $307.6 million verdict, finding they were deliberately indifferent to former Michigan inmate Kohchise Jackson’s serious medical needs. Jackson, who spent about two years in state custody, told jurors he endured a temporary colostomy that leaked, humiliated him, and was never reversed despite an earlier promise that surgery would be done.
The award totals $307.6 million, including $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages against CHS TX, Inc., plus $100,000 in punitive damages against a Corizon doctor. The trial started last Tuesday, and jurors needed only about two hours of deliberation before returning the verdict. The case centered on claims that contractor staff denied Jackson proper medical supplies and failed to carry out a reversal surgery that had been scheduled while he was still in county custody, as reported by the Detroit Free Press.
Jackson’s 2019 lawsuit says that in 2016, while at the St. Clair County Jail, he developed a colovesical fistula and underwent an emergency Hartmann’s procedure that left him with a temporary stoma. According to the complaint, he was told that a reversal would occur in February 2017, but the surgery never happened. The suit alleges that inadequate colostomy supplies left him frequently leaking and ostracized during his incarceration. Those allegations are laid out in the court complaint and medical records on file in the case, as shown in the Law in Ann Arbor court filing.
The defendant at trial, CHS TX, Inc., is the company that assumed many of Corizon’s operating assets after Corizon’s 2023 bankruptcy and divisional merger, a corporate reorganization that plaintiffs have argued was designed to limit liability. Bankruptcy records and legal summaries describe how contracts and employees were shifted into successor entities while other liabilities were left behind. Disputes over successor liability and substitution have been a running theme in the case and are expected to be central to post-verdict enforcement fights, according to court summaries and filings.
“I think that this jury recognized the basic human rights and the constitutional rights of everybody,” plaintiff attorney Jonathan Marko said after the verdict. Defense attorney Adam Masin fired back, calling the proceedings “a circus” and “a spectacle,” according to the Detroit Free Press. Jackson was paroled in May 2019 after serving roughly two years and two months, and jurors deliberated a little over two hours before returning the award, the coverage notes.
Legal and financial stakes
The verdict raises immediate questions about whether Jackson will ever see the full amount, what insurance will actually cover, and how this will shape the future of private prison-health contracting in Michigan. CHS TX and related successor entities are expected to pursue appeals and post-trial motions, and the bankruptcy-era corporate structure surrounding Corizon is likely to play a key role in any effort to collect on the judgment. Court dockets in the case already show contested motions over substitution and successor liability that will influence the next steps in enforcement and appeals, according to public court records.
