Veteran Sues After Wrong Leg Amputated

PHOTO CAPTION: Selby General Hospital in Marietta, Ohio. Army veteran Sharon Jacks is suing the hospital and members of her surgical team after her left leg was amputated during a September 2025 operation intended to remove her right leg. The hospital has called the incident avoidable and said expected operating-room procedures were not followed. File photo/Google Maps.

A 74-year-old Army veteran is suing an Ohio hospital after surgeons removed the wrong leg during a planned amputation, an error that ultimately left her a double amputee.
Sharon Jacks of Meigs County filed the lawsuit Sept. 15 in Washington County Common Pleas Court against Selby General Hospital and members of the medical and surgical team involved in her care.
The operation itself happened Sept. 19, 2025.
Jacks had agreed to have her right leg amputated below the knee after medical problems involving squamous cell carcinoma and a chronic venous stasis ulcer.
According to the lawsuit, the surgery was scheduled and documented as a right below-the-knee amputation.
Her attorney says the correct right leg was even marked before surgery.
But surgeons removed her left leg instead.
Attorney Brad Layne said his review of the medical records showed the mark identifying the correct surgical site was still visible on Jacks’ right leg after the left leg had been amputated.
The lawsuit alleges there were multiple opportunities to catch the error before the operation went forward.
The wrong leg was prepared and draped for surgery, and a tourniquet was placed around Jacks’ left thigh.
The medical records also reportedly document two surgical “time-outs.”
Those safety pauses are intended to confirm the identity of the patient, the procedure being performed and the correct surgical site before the operation proceeds.
According to Jacks’ lawsuit, neither check stopped the team from amputating the wrong leg.
“She went into surgery, and when she woke up, the wrong leg had been taken off,” Layne told WBNS.
Jacks still had the medical condition that required the original surgery.
About four months later, she underwent another operation at a different Ohio hospital to remove her right leg below the knee.
She was now a double amputee.
Her husband, Dannie Jacks, has since left his job to help care for her, according to her attorney.
Layne said everyday activities now require significant adjustments, including moving between a wheelchair and bed, using the bathroom and getting dressed.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of medical negligence, battery, reckless conduct and other failures and seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Selby General Hospital has acknowledged that something went seriously wrong during the September 2025 operation.
The hospital said its internal review determined the surgical event was avoidable and that expected operating-room procedures had not been followed.
It said the people involved were held accountable and are no longer in their positions.
The hospital also said all surgical employees underwent mandatory retraining and that additional safety measures were implemented.
According to the hospital, its procedures were subsequently reviewed with the Mayo Clinic and by the Ohio Department of Health.
The hospital said those reviews found its current surgical safety protocols to be consistent with applicable standards.
The lawsuit describes the wrong-site amputation as the type of catastrophic patient-safety failure sometimes referred to in medicine as a “never event,” meaning an event considered serious and preventable.
Jacks’ case now centers not on whether a surgical error occurred, but on legal responsibility for an operation that the hospital itself has described as avoidable.
More than a year after the surgery, Jacks is living with the permanent result.
She went into the hospital expecting to lose her right lower leg.
She ultimately lost both.