Senior paralegal Nathan Lumbard serves on the board of Citizens for Prison Reform.
By Jeanine Matlow
Legal News
From an early age, Nathan Lumbard – a senior paralegal for Margolis and Cross in Ann Arbor that specializes in criminal defense, personal injury and accident law – knew he wanted to be an attorney.
But before working as a paralegal on Jackson v. CHS TX, Inc. (formerly Corizon), which resulted in a $307.6 million verdict against a private prison health care contractor, he led a very different life.
It started in high school when Lumbard interned with a superior court judge in Indiana. The position – which included the probation department and the prosecuting attorney’s office – was intended for a college student.
Several encounters with law enforcement led to bad blood between Lumbard and the local sheriff’s department. A later indictment would alter his course.
“In that moment, my world unraveled, because I knew what that meant for me. I wanted to be a federal prosecutor. To be on the other side of things felt as though my life was stripped away and all those goals no longer belonged to me.”
Lumbard, who until then had no criminal record, fled to Mexico.
“I snuck out of the courthouse while the jury was deliberating,” says Lumbard. “It was very selfish. I grew up very sheltered and somewhat privileged and I didn’t handle adversity well.”
When Lumbard was apprehended, he accepted his new lot. After he was released on probation, he was committed to living as a criminal. Even as he returned to college, he started making fake IDs.
“I didn’t believe in myself,” says Lumbard, who was soon in trouble again. “I had a ‘Catch Me If You Can’ mentality.”
Lumbard became a federal fugitive a second time for passport fraud and identity theft. He built a new life in Southeast Asia where he taught at a university and later held an executive position at a company.
“After being featured on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ Burmese intelligence located and detained me,” he explains. “I spent over four months imprisoned for espionage before being returned to the United States.”
During incarceration, Lumbard had vision loss, balance issues, and difficulty walking. Repeated requests for medical care were ignored. He was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, after significant progression. When he entered the Michigan Department of Corrections, he was denied the neurologist-recommended treatment and eventually required a wheelchair.
With no legal training, Lumbard filed a pro se deliberate indifference lawsuit under §1983 from prison where he conducted depositions of the defendants and secured a significant settlement against a county jail.
“However, the court dismissed my claims against the private prison health care contractor Corizon because I could not establish a policy or practice under Monell—specifically, that care was being denied to save money,” he explains.
After his release, Lumbard returned to school at the encouragement of the presiding magistrate judge, Ray Kent, earning a legal studies degree from Purdue Global.
A new MS treatment allowed Lumbard to walk. And then, civil rights attorney Ian Cross from Margolis and Cross contacted him after finding Lumbard’s case while preparing for litigation against Corizon in the Jackson matter.
Lumbard subsequently joined the Margolis and Cross team as a paralegal on what became Jackson v. CHS TX, Inc. The corporate representative at trial was the same physician who had denied Lombard his MS treatment years earlier.
“After the verdict, I approached her, reintroduced myself and reflected on the full-circle nature of the case by thanking her,” Lumbard recalls. “I then informed her that if it wasn’t for that day, this day would never have happened to her.”
Lumbard – who sits on the board of Citizens for Prison Reform and scored in the 93rd percentile on the JD-Next – has tremendous gratitude for people who got him back on track.
“Ian (Cross) took a chance on me; he is an outside-the-box thinker who is truly brilliant,” he says. “Judge Kent gave me a purpose and allowed me to believe in myself again. Sometimes we overlook the power we have in other people’s lives.”
Legal News
From an early age, Nathan Lumbard – a senior paralegal for Margolis and Cross in Ann Arbor that specializes in criminal defense, personal injury and accident law – knew he wanted to be an attorney.
But before working as a paralegal on Jackson v. CHS TX, Inc. (formerly Corizon), which resulted in a $307.6 million verdict against a private prison health care contractor, he led a very different life.
It started in high school when Lumbard interned with a superior court judge in Indiana. The position – which included the probation department and the prosecuting attorney’s office – was intended for a college student.
Several encounters with law enforcement led to bad blood between Lumbard and the local sheriff’s department. A later indictment would alter his course.
“In that moment, my world unraveled, because I knew what that meant for me. I wanted to be a federal prosecutor. To be on the other side of things felt as though my life was stripped away and all those goals no longer belonged to me.”
Lumbard, who until then had no criminal record, fled to Mexico.
“I snuck out of the courthouse while the jury was deliberating,” says Lumbard. “It was very selfish. I grew up very sheltered and somewhat privileged and I didn’t handle adversity well.”
When Lumbard was apprehended, he accepted his new lot. After he was released on probation, he was committed to living as a criminal. Even as he returned to college, he started making fake IDs.
“I didn’t believe in myself,” says Lumbard, who was soon in trouble again. “I had a ‘Catch Me If You Can’ mentality.”
Lumbard became a federal fugitive a second time for passport fraud and identity theft. He built a new life in Southeast Asia where he taught at a university and later held an executive position at a company.
“After being featured on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ Burmese intelligence located and detained me,” he explains. “I spent over four months imprisoned for espionage before being returned to the United States.”
During incarceration, Lumbard had vision loss, balance issues, and difficulty walking. Repeated requests for medical care were ignored. He was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, after significant progression. When he entered the Michigan Department of Corrections, he was denied the neurologist-recommended treatment and eventually required a wheelchair.
With no legal training, Lumbard filed a pro se deliberate indifference lawsuit under §1983 from prison where he conducted depositions of the defendants and secured a significant settlement against a county jail.
“However, the court dismissed my claims against the private prison health care contractor Corizon because I could not establish a policy or practice under Monell—specifically, that care was being denied to save money,” he explains.
After his release, Lumbard returned to school at the encouragement of the presiding magistrate judge, Ray Kent, earning a legal studies degree from Purdue Global.
A new MS treatment allowed Lumbard to walk. And then, civil rights attorney Ian Cross from Margolis and Cross contacted him after finding Lumbard’s case while preparing for litigation against Corizon in the Jackson matter.
Lumbard subsequently joined the Margolis and Cross team as a paralegal on what became Jackson v. CHS TX, Inc. The corporate representative at trial was the same physician who had denied Lombard his MS treatment years earlier.
“After the verdict, I approached her, reintroduced myself and reflected on the full-circle nature of the case by thanking her,” Lumbard recalls. “I then informed her that if it wasn’t for that day, this day would never have happened to her.”
Lumbard – who sits on the board of Citizens for Prison Reform and scored in the 93rd percentile on the JD-Next – has tremendous gratitude for people who got him back on track.
“Ian (Cross) took a chance on me; he is an outside-the-box thinker who is truly brilliant,” he says. “Judge Kent gave me a purpose and allowed me to believe in myself again. Sometimes we overlook the power we have in other people’s lives.”
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