Load using tabsselect causes 'events' is null... error in IE (urgent help needed)

Load using tabsselect causes 'events' is null... error in IE (urgent help needed)

Regarding the following, I've tried 1.8 up to 1.8.4...
The following error only happens in IE 8
I've stripped out anything other than the most basic functionality.

Scenario: 

1. example page layout...

<body>
<div id='workarea'>
    <div id='tab1>{tab defition...}</div>
</div>
</body>

2. Initialize tabs: 
$("#tab1").tabs( );

3. Bind to tabsselect function to load data to tab:
$t.bind('tabsselect', function (event, ui) {
   return $(this).LoadTabFunc(event, ui);
});

4. LoadTabFunction retrieves (via post) and loads the result to the tab panel... $(ui.panel).html(data);

Tabs load as expected and work fine. 

User then selects a button and new content is loaded and inserted to workarea $("#workarea").html(data);

Once this happens, IE returns the following message "'events' is null or not an object". I've traced through and the errors comes from the jquery.extend:cleanData routine. Specifically, as jquery loops through the cache for elements from $("#workarea") during the empty() prior to the post() of the new data, it does not find some of the objects said to exist based on the elements array (jquery.expando). 

This error only happens in IE. FireFox, Chrome and Safari do not have the problem. 

I've exhausted all the options I can think of... 
- destroy tabs prior to load
- remove all the content from the prior panel prior to load of new content in new panel
- i even created a panel that loaded no data. selected it last and made sure all the panels were cleared before trying to replace the tabs content, but no luck... still get the error.

PLEASE help.

Thanks!