Jquery IE error

Jquery IE error

So, was wondering if anyone could solve this one for me, not too familiar with JQuery.

I downloaded this vertical flyout menu using JQuery and it works fine in all browsers 100% except for IE. In IE, it gives me an error:

Microsoft JScript runtime error: 'parents(...).0.$settings' is null or not an object

The area of code that it breaks in is this:

function getSettings(el) {
return $(el).parents('ul.jd_menu_flag_root')[0].$settings;
}

So, it seems the parent settings of the menu is null. And I noticed how it only did on certain menu tabs. The menu tabs with submenus was fine, but the ones with no submenus always threw that error.

Anyone have any idea how to fix this?