Mr. Barber of Surgical Assistance, for example, asserted the privilege nearly two dozen times in a deposition.

Swollen Like Balloons

Jerri Plummer never figured out whom Yolanda worked for. But in December 2014, Dr. Whitney Shoemaker performed the implant-removal surgery. Until the day of the operation, Ms. Plummer had never spoken to Dr. Shoemaker. Her lawyer declined to comment.

Hours after Ms. Plummer went under the scalpel, she said, she was hustled back to a Hampton Inn just off the freeway, with a catheter sticking out of her side. The next day, a nurse arrived at the motel, removed the catheter and put her in a taxi to the airport.

Soon after she arrived home in Arkansas, she said, complications developed. Her legs swelled like balloons. Her stomach seized up. Ms. Plummer went to her original doctor for help, she said. He informed her that the damage was irreversible. Worse, she said in court records, he told her that there had been no need for the removal surgery.

Before the surgery, Ms. Plummer loved to take walks with her two pit bulls and to eat with her husband at Red Lobster. Now chronic incontinence forces her to wear diapers all day and has left her too worried about wetting herself to venture outside.

With the help of a local lawyer, James R. Baxter, she is suing Law Cash; Dr. Shoemaker; Mr. Barber and his firm, Surgical Assistance; and lawyers at the McSweeney firm.

Mr. McSweeney declined to comment on the lawsuit. His firm is trying to get Ms. Plummer’s lawsuit moved from federal court into private arbitration, where there is no judge or jury. In his statement, he said the firm “had no role” connecting clients with surgical funders like Law Cash or Banyan Finance.