diff --git a/taskman.inc.php b/taskman.inc.php
index 2565c6f..48d9a9d 100644
--- a/taskman.inc.php
+++ b/taskman.inc.php
@@ -313,6 +313,8 @@ class TaskmanFileChanges
     {
       $lines = internal\_extract_lines_from_file($json_or_file);
       $json = '[' . implode(',', $lines) . ']';
+      //NOTE: adding some sanitization for potentially malformed json
+      $json = str_replace(["\\", "\r\n", "\n"], ["/", "", ""], $json);
     }
 
     $decoded = json_decode($json, true);