Judge orders Corizon to pay attorneys’ fees

Former N.M. inmate health care provider violated state public-records law

A state district judge has ruled that Corizon Health, which formerly oversaw medical care for New Mexico prison inmates, must pay legal fees for violating the state public-records law.

Corizon has refused to release to two newspapers and an advocacy group the settlement agreements it made with prisoners who had sued the company.

Judge Raymond Ortiz said in his decision this month that Corizon must pay $37,535 to attorneys who represented the organizations that sought the records.

Ortiz wrote that the petitioners — the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Albuquerque Journal and the Foundation for Open Government — were denied written requests for public records. They successfully sued Corizon to obtain the records, and under state law they are entitled to attorneys’ fees, the judge said.

He also said that awarding reasonable legal fees encourages attorneys to take the cases of private citizens who file lawsuits seeking to enforce the Open Records Act.

Ortiz last August ruled on the merits of the case, finding that “the settlement agreements are public records subject to disclosure.”

Corizon is appealing that ruling and the one regarding attorneys’ fees to the state Court of Appeals. It has yet to produce the documents. The company did not respond to messages left with its attorney and a spokesperson seeking comment for this story.

Until the state replaced Corizon last year, it held a $37.5 million a year contract to provide health care to state inmates. Corizon paid about $4.5 million to settle lawsuits brought by inmates in its nine years as the medical provider. The bulk of those settlements were with inmates who claimed they were sexually assaulted by a doctor employed by Corizon.

Both Corizon and the state Corrections Department have refused to release the settlement agreements in response to public-records requests, citing language in the company’s contract. The department also said it had entered into confidentiality agreements with the prisoners who had sued and that releasing the settlements would breach those deals.

But attorney Dan Yohalem, who along with Katherine Murray represented petitioners in the case, successfully argued that the confidentially agreed upon by Corizon and the Corrections Department was illegal.

“They can’t negotiate some kind of secrecy,” Yohalem said during a hearing last summer.

Given the pending appeals, Yohalem said Tuesday, it’s likely the company won’t pay up anytime soon.

Corizon, the nation’s largest for-profit provider of inmate care, faced more than 150 lawsuits filed by some 200 inmates in the nine years it had the contract. That was a sharp increase in the rate of lawsuits by inmates during the 2004-07 tenure of the previous provider, Wexford Health Sources.

The state fired Wexford over concerns about the quality of its medical care.

And the Department of Corrections chose not to renew its contract with Corizon last spring after a six-month investigation by The New Mexican, published in April 2016, revealed deep problems with inmate care provided by the company and with the state’s lax oversight of Corizon.

Even so, the state’s contract with new provider Centurion also allows the company to keep settlement agreements confidential.

S.U. Mahesh, a spokesman for the Corrections Department, didn’t directly reply to questions about why a state agency continues to allow a contractor to keep settlements confidential and how this arrangement serves the public.

Instead, Mahesh said: “We understand this is an ongoing litigation between Corizon and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The case is on appeal. We’re watching to see what happens in the case, but we’re not a party to the case.”