An Ohio woman filed a lawsuit accusing a hospital and her doctors of amputating the wrong leg during an operation last year. The 74-year-old woman is now a double amputee after the correct surgery was later performed at another facility.
The woman, Sharon Jacks, of Meigs County, Ohio, said her original surgery was intended for her right leg. Instead, her left leg was amputated at Selby General Hospital in September 2025, according to the lawsuit, which was filed this month in Washington County Court in Marietta, Ohio, where the hospital is based.
Ms. Jacks filed the lawsuit with her husband, Dannie. It accuses nine defendants, including the hospital and Ms. Jacks’s medical and surgical teams, of gross negligence, battery and reckless conduct.
She underwent the correct operation on her right leg four months later at another hospital in Ohio, her lawyer, Brad Layne, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Ms. Jacks has “suffered physical injury, permanent disability, pain and suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, medical expenses and other damages,” according to the 32-page complaint.
“The conduct of defendants demonstrated a conscious disregard of fundamental safety principles universally recognized within the medical profession,” it added.
On Sept. 19, 2025, Ms. Jacks agreed to have her lower right leg amputated after her doctor recommended the procedure as part of a treatment plan for cancer, Mr. Layne said. (Ms. Jacks’s cancer diagnosis was not disclosed in the lawsuit.)
Ms. Jacks “consented only to surgery involving her right lower extremity,” the lawsuit said, noting she “never consented to amputation of her left lower extremity.”
Mr. Layne said that standard operating procedure requires a surgical team to take “surgical time outs” to verify that they are performing the right procedure in the right place on the right patient “before proceeding with surgery.”
Though medical records stated that “two time outs” had taken place, “the surgical team still amputated the wrong leg,” Mr. Layne added.
“The performance of surgery upon the wrong extremity constituted a complete failure of basic safety procedures,” the lawsuit says.
Selby General Hospital, part of the Memorial Health System in Ohio and West Virginia, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In a statement to WBNS-TV of Columbus, the hospital acknowledged mistakes and said “our expected operating room procedures were not followed.”
The statement added the medical workers who were involved in the surgery are “no longer in their positions.”
“We are saddened by what occurred, and our team continues to keep this patient and their family in our prayers,” the hospital’s statement said.
Ms. Jacks is requesting unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, her lawyer said.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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