A 74-year-old Ohio woman, an Army veteran, has both legs amputated below the knee as a wrong operation removed the wrong leg, and then, to correct that, she had to undergo another amputation. Sharon Jacks filed a lawsuit this month in Washington County Common Pleas Court in Marietta, Ohio, claiming that her left leg was amputated at Selby General Hospital in September 2025 while the surgery was meant to remove her right leg.Four months after the wrong surgery, Jacks underwent the originally intended amputation and now she is a double amputee.Jacks and her husband named nine defendants in the suit, including the hospital and Jacks’ medical and surgical teams, accusing them of gross negligence, battery and reckless conduct.Jacks “suffered physical injury, permanent disability, pain and suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, medical expenses and other damages,” the lawsuit stated.“Defendants acted willfully, wantonly, recklessly, maliciously, and with conscious disregard for the substantial certainty of catastrophic injury,” the 32-page lawsuit added.The original surgery was recommended to Jacks for the treatment of a type of skin cancer. After the correct operation, she has been cancer-free.Her attorney, Brad Layne, said that during the first surgery, the team of doctors marked the correct leg but then amputated the wrong leg. They realized the error during the procedure and told Jacks’ family before she woke up. “The mark was still on the correct leg after the wrong leg had been taken off,” Layne claimed.The hospital called this mishap an “avoidable event” and said it retrained all of its surgical staff and those who were involved in Jacks’ operation were removed from their positions.DrvGregory Krivchenia II, who is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, performed the wrong surgery and is still licensed to practice in Ohio, NBC News reported. Layne said the wrong-site amputation has changed everything in his client’s life, from her ability to get dressed to her ability to cook for herself. “I would be wrong if I said things were great, of course. They’re taking it, day by day, her and her husband, just trying to get through life,” Layne said.
