jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I have a grid where one of the columns contain html code. Everything works fine until the html code within the column data contains a table, in which case I get a js exception: "g.p.colModel[a] is undefined". In the src, I narrowed it down to the following and created a work around that seems to work:

 …

getRowData : function( rowid ) {
  var res = {}, resall, getall=false, len, j=0;
  this.each(function(){
   var $t = this,nm,ind;
   if(typeof(rowid) == 'undefined') {
    getall = true;
    resall = [];
    len = $t.rows.length;
   } else {
    ind = $t.rows.namedItem(rowid);
    if(!ind) { return res; }
    len = 2;
   }
   while(j<len){
    if(getall) { ind = $t.rows[j]; }
    if( $(ind).hasClass('jqgrow') ) {
     $('td',ind).each( function(i) {
      try {
       nm = $t.p.colModel[i].name;
       if ( nm !== 'cb' && nm !== 'subgrid' && nm !== 'rn') {
        if($t.p.treeGrid===true && nm == $t.p.ExpandColumn) {
         res[nm] = $.jgrid.htmlDecode($("span:first",this).html());
        } else {
         try {
          res[nm] = $.unformat.call($t,this,{rowId:ind.id, colModel:$t.p.colModel[i]},i);
         } catch (e){
          res[nm] = $.jgrid.htmlDecode($(this).html());
         }
        }
       }
      } catch(e) {
      }
     });
     if(getall) { resall.push(res); res={}; }
    }
    j++;
   }
  });
  return resall ? resall: res;
 },…

The bold line is the code that is triggering the exception. The italic bold code is my work around that I added. My question is: Is my work around "safe" and/or is there a better way to accomplish this?

I tried creating a small stand-alone example but for some reason, my small example works. I think it may be related to the datatype of json — my small example cannot fully impliment this without creating a scripting dependancy — a hard coded html template for the getter is not cutting it. I can send what I have if it helps.