Judge Grants Attorney’s Motion to Withdrawal from Corizon Health Case Due to Non-Payment
by Douglas Ankney
Corizon Health, Inc. (“Corizon”) was a private profiteer that, in 2019, contracted with 149 prisons to provide medical care to incarcerated persons. While Corizon’s business shrank to serving just 52 prisons by May 2022, its decadence expanded from cheating prisoners and their families out of damages awarded based on Corizon’s substandard medical care to stiffing attorneys on their fees when representing Corizon.
As repeatedly reported in PLN, Corizon has been named as a defendant in scores of lawsuits filed by prisoners, pretrial detainees and/or their families that alleged it failed to provide constitutionally adequate medical care. In many of these cases, the horrid lack of even basic medical care resulted in lifelong permanent injury or death. And damages, including compensatory and punitive, were awarded as a remedy.
In a recent case, non-economic damages of $7.5 million were awarded jointly and severally against Corizon and one other defendant—with another whopping $300 million in punitive damages awarded against Corizon only. See: Jackson v. Corizon Health, Inc., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80656 (E.D. Mich. April 13, 2026). But, as also reported in PLN, Corizon filed for bankruptcy in Texas in 2023 and reemerged as two separate companies: one was named CHS TX—now known as YesCare—and the other retained the name Corizon Health, operating as Tehum Care Services. [See: PLN, Sep. 2025, p.15.]
While CHS TX retained most of the assets—including cash, personnel, contracts, and real estate—Corizon Health inherited all of the debts, including the damages awarded to prisoners, detainees, and their families. Of course, since most of the assets went to CHS TX, Corizon Health will settle those damages for a fraction of what was originally awarded, claiming it is insolvent.
Corizon received millions of dollars in contracted payments to provide medical care to prisoners and pretrial detainees. Corizon failed to live up to its contractual obligations, providing substandard care that resulted in lifelong injuries and deaths. As a remedy, damages were awarded against Corizon. But Corizon divided itself into two companies by manipulating Texas law, assigned its debts to one of those companies while assigning its assets to the other, and will evade paying all but a fraction of those damages to the incarcerated persons they maimed and killed.
Yet Corizon is not content with only mistreating and cheating incarcerated persons. Lisa Lee Alice Brown, 50, sued CHS TX and others in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in October 2023, related to injuries from a fall from her bunk while she was incarcerated at the St. Clair County Jail in 2021. Brown’s fall resulted in several fractured vertebrae in her neck, but she was not taken to a hospital until 68 hours after her fall. Due to the delay, Brown suffers permanent disabilities, including inability to move her left hand and the loss of much function of her legs.
In January 2026, the law firm representing CHS TX—Foley, Baron, Metzger, & Julip PLLC (“FBMJ”)—moved to withdraw from the case. FBMJ wrote that there has been a “complete breakdown” in the communications regarding payment. “FBMJ has continued to have issues concerning certain obligations involving Clients honoring their obligations to FBMJ (including payment of FBMJ’s attorneys’ fees incurred in Clients’ representation),” the motion stated. “This has gotten to the point that FBMJ and their attorneys can no longer continue to represent Clients.”
The law firm’s motion to withdraw from Brown’s case was approved by a district court judge on March 31, 2026.
Source: The Times Herald
[Note to Readers: CHS TX was acquired by YesCare, Inc., which is owned by single shareholder Sara Tirschwell, who was the CEO of Corizon Health. That firm, in turn, now operates under the name Tehum Care Services, Inc. While the names have changed, the stench remains the same.]
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