La Quinta woman broke tooth “while eating bread”; wants bar and grill to pay for dental bill

La Quinta resident Candace Pittson says she went to Cactus Jack’s back on August 2nd, immediately after getting her teeth cleaned at her dental office a few blocks away.

“I was so delighted from a beautiful cleaning that day, and they recommended this place to me,” said Pittson.

After ordering shrimp and a salad, the retired yoga instructor says she bit into a piece of bread, and that’s when she says “it happened”.

“I bit into it and it broke my crown,” said PIttson.

Pittson says after she stopped eating, she did not hang on to the tooth fragment, or the pebble she says she bit.

But before leaving the restaurant, she says she and her server poked through trash, looking for them.

“I was very hungry. it was sourdough bread with black things in it,” said Pittson.

She says after leaving the restaurant, she immediately went back to the dental office, but her dentist had already left. It wasn’t until the following Tuesday that her tooth was repaired.
She paid the $2,000 using a credit card.

She provided a photo from the dental office showing the broken tooth, before it was repaired.

It was the lower right, back molar.

“I thought it was a rock, but it was a pebble. It was enough to crack my crown,” said Pittson.

After the repair, Pittson says she wrote letters to Cactus Jack’s, and made multiple phone calls, asking to be reimbursed, but says she was ignored. She then contacted News Channel 3 asking for help.

After speaking with Candace, we went inside the business to speak with management to see how they might respond to her claim.

The owner of Cactus Jack’s, George Bishop, would not appear on camera. But, he offered a statement saying quote “we investigated and found we were not at fault”.

In saying she takes dental care “very seriously”, Pittson says the issue is not so much about the money, but “about the principle”.

“I’m mad at this owner for not calling me back,” said PIttson.

The moral of the story seems to be a simple one.

If it you break a tooth while dining, keep the evidence.