A federal jury returned a $307.6M verdict after a former Michigan inmate said he served over two years with a leaking, foul-smelling colostomy bag, and said the state prison health provider refused to pay for surgery as a cost-cutting move.
The verdict came down on April 2, 2026, after years of allegations that the company, Corizon Health, deliberately denied a medically necessary surgery on Kohchise Jackson.
It was not for any medical reason, but because it was cheaper to force him to live with a colostomy bag in prison, where he was subjected to physical abuse by other inmates as a result, the man’s attorney said.
“It was a horrible experience for me,” Jackson, 44, told Local 4. “Shame on you,” he added, “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”
Jackson told Local 4 his experience is still too difficult to discuss in detail.
“It was horrible, having to be in those close quarters with guys wearing a colostomy bag, knowing that it was supposed to come off within two months,” Jackson said.
“A billion-dollar company who makes a profit by bilking the taxpayers faced the music,” said one of his civil rights attorneys, Jonathan Marko of Marko Law. “The evidence showed the companies spent decades making a calculated decision based on profit that the lives of prisoners didn’t matter. No corporation is above the law.”
What the lawsuit alleges happened to Jackson
In the lawsuit filed back in 2019 against CHS TX, Inc., formerly known as Corizon Health and its successor, YesCare, Jackson and his attorneys alleged “deprivation of civil rights” while he was detained at the St. Clair County Correctional Facility from 2016 to 2017, and in the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) from 2017 to 2019.
It is alleged that around July of 2016, Jackson developed a hole in the tissue that separates the large intestine from the bladder.
According to the suit, Jackson’s bowel contents, like feces and intestinal gas, escaped out of Jackson’s large intestine and into his bladder, “causing bladder infections, urinary tract infections, high fevers, chills, nausea, vomiting, and extreme pain.”
Erickson: “How were you treated?”
Jackson: “I was scrutinized. I was treated like an animal.”
Erickson: “By whom?
Jackson: “Inmates and staff.”
“He wouldn’t get the supplies, the bag would pop open when he was trying to work out in the yard and spray feces all over his body and other prisoners,” said Marko. “Imagine being in prison and treated like a leper because you have a bag of smelly feces hanging off your body.”
Jackson said he reported the problems over and over to staff, including “feces, coming out in his urine,” but on each exam, he was only diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and prescribed an antibiotic.
“They refuse to approve his surgery because it costs too much money,” Marko said. “It cost $919.35, so he had to live with a bag, pooping into this bag for years.”
The suit stated Jackson was taken to the emergency room in December 2016, where staff correctly diagnosed a colovesical fistula and planned the first surgery for later that month, with a plan that included a colostomy reversal in February 2017.
The reversal didn’t happen as scheduled because it was not “emergent or life-threatening.” After Jackson was transferred to MDOC custody in March 2017, it’s further alleged that Corizon refused to reverse Jackson’s temporary colostomy on the basis that reversal was “not medically necessary.”
Jackson told Local 4 it led to humiliation and pain, and “physical altercations with people that I was locking with,” and “being talked about.”
It’s also alleged that his medical providers frequently failed to provide him with a sufficient supply of colostomy bags and patches, or to provide bags and patches that fit with each other or were the correct size.
Further allegations
Marko said the company also instructed its own nurses and doctors “never to write” the word “denied” in a patient’s chart, instead replacing it with the euphemism “Alternative Treatment Plan”, specifically to hide what it was doing from courts and regulators.
“You will never get your colostomy reversed in the MDOC because it’s too expensive,” Marko said.
“They told a patient who was suffering from chest pain to just ‘make him comfortable and let him die’ without ordering an EMS,” Marko said. “Another patient was having seizures and hitting his head on the ground, and the Defendant refused to allow him a neurology consult, instead telling her to ‘get him a helmet.’”
The suit alleged Corizon was paid on a “per-prisoner-per-month (PPPM) basis,” and said that structure gave the company “a strong financial incentive to deny medical care to Michigan prisoners whenever possible.”
It alleges Corizon “refused to approve a surgery to reverse Mr. Jackson’s temporary colostomy” and “refused to reverse Plaintiff’s colostomy in order to avoid paying for the procedure, so that it could retain a larger portion of the prisoner healthcare payments it received from the State of Michigan as corporate profit.
Jackson was paroled on May 16, 2019, and enrolled in the Healthy Michigan Plan within two weeks, then underwent evaluation for reversal surgery at the Detroit Medical Center on May 31, 2019.
What happens next?
“The jury saw enough,” Marko said. “This jury watched all of it. And then they rendered their verdict,” Marko said, calling the company “evil” and a “criminal enterprise.”
“I just wish these bad people would get put out of business so they can’t do the same thing they did to me than anyone else,” Jackson said.
“We have a lot of different cases against this company,” Marko said. “We have a lot of work to do. These people are still doing business across the country. I want them gone. These people should not only be put out of business, they should be put in prison themselves.”