Something was in your food that shouldn't have been

Also keep the rest of the food, the packaging, the lot number, and the receipt. If it came from a package, the lot number lets investigators check whether other complaints exist from the same production run — and they often do.

Some jurisdictions apply a foreign-natural test, under which naturally occurring objects generally don't support a claim because a consumer should anticipate them. Others apply a reasonable expectation test, which asks what a consumer would actually expect given how the food was described and sold — and under that test, a bone in a boneless chicken wing or a shell in a filleted fish can support a claim.

Genuinely foreign objects — glass, metal, plastic, rubber, wire bristles from a grill brush, insects — are actionable essentially everywhere.

Get seen by a dentist immediately and have them document the mechanism — that the fracture is consistent with biting a hard foreign object — in the chart. That single note in the record is what connects the injury to the meal.

The other injury pattern is internal: lacerations to the mouth, throat, or esophagus from glass or metal, which is a genuine emergency and warrants an ER visit rather than a dentist.