Ohio woman loses the wrong leg during surgery to treat cancer, now she’s suing the hospital. How much could she get?

“She went into surgery, and when she woke up, the wrong leg had been taken off. Yeah, it defies explanation, obviously,” her attorney Brad Layne told WBNS.

The cancer was still in her right leg, so that leg was removed later as well. She now has no legs, and she and her husband are suing the hospital.

You’d think a case like Sharon and her husband would be worth millions, but Ohio law already caps a big part of what she can collect, and the limit is lower. It’s up to the Supreme Court of Ohio to determine if that cap still holds.

What the lawsuit says happened

According to the lawsuit, the hospital went through the key safety checks. Before the surgery, they checked off and marked the correct leg, and the surgical team ran two documented time-outs, which is when everyone in the operating room stops and confirms out loud the patient’s identity and the procedure, including where it’ll be done on the body.

Despite all that, they still removed the wrong leg.

“It was marked the correct leg. Everything seemed to be in order,” Layne told WTAP. He says the surgeon’s mark was still on her right leg afterward.

The complaint, which names the hospital, the surgeon and members of the surgical team, includes nine counts, including medical negligence and battery.

Memorial Health System, which runs Selby General, said in a statement: “Our proactive review of what took place confirmed this was an avoidable event, and that our expected operating room procedures were not followed. Those involved were held accountable for their actions and are no longer in their positions.”

Operating on the wrong body part is called a never event, because it should never happen. Still, cases like this happen. The Joint Commission received reports of 127 wrong-surgery cases in 2024, up 13% from the year before, and 36% left permanent harm. And those are just the ones that were reported.

The bills that come with a double amputation

Layne told WTAP what her life looks like now: “You can imagine somebody that’s a double amputee now, you know, there’s prosthetics, there’s transportation modifications, there’s housing modifications.”

The household also lost a paycheck. Her husband, Dannie, quit his job to take care of her. “She certainly couldn’t be left home, you know, as a double amputee trying to manage property or manage their home that was not set up for that,” Layne said.

Ordinary daily tasks are hard now too. “Every day is a struggle. You know, she has to transport herself from a board to a wheelchair just to get to the bathroom or to get into the bed or to change clothes or to go anywhere,” Layne said.

These costs are under what the law calls economic damages, and in Ohio medical cases, there’s no cap on them. If the pair can document the amount, they can ask a jury to cover it.

How Ohio caps pain and suffering

Ohio puts a limit on pain and suffering in medical cases. Jacks lost a limb, and the law treats her injury as catastrophic, so her limit goes up to $500,000, no matter what a jury thinks it’s worth. Dannie’s also asking for money for losing his wife’s companionship and support, and the two of them together can’t get more than $1 million for that kind of loss.