Woman On Hook In Fish Case Stuck With Damaged Teeth, Legal Bills

Kae Walker has a beef with tuna.

Not to mention a broken tooth, ruined gold crown, $5,000 in dental bills, and legal bills from a lawsuit she lost over the allegedly amiss fish.

All of this from a pea-sized crystal of naturally occurring minerals that she says came in a can of white albacore tuna.

Some days she’s angriest about how uninformed people are about struvite crystals. Other days she’s angriest about efforts to limit lawsuits from everyday people like herself.

“There’s all of this controversy over unnecessary lawsuits,” said Walker, a Hayden Lake homemaker. “I had no intention of going to court and suing.”

Walker purchased the can of low-salt diet tuna two years ago because she had several health problems and figured eating right started with sandwich from a top-of-the-line, $1.69 can of tuna.

Munch, crunch, lunch extraordinaire. A few bites later she hit the crystal, cutting her mouth and breaking a tooth, Walker said. Nearby teeth were cracked and a gold crown ruined.

Walker contacted Bumble Bee Seafoods - which canned the allegedly tooth-breaking tuna. The company had the National Food Processors Association test the crystal, confirming it was magnesium ammonium phosphate.

The company asked for a copy of her dental bills and then offered her $100 “as a goodwill settlement” and to “assist in paying your dental expenses,” according to a letter from the company.

Walker’s dental bills by then were clearing $2,000, and the pain and root canals were far from over so she rejected that offer.

Things stalled, so Walker filed suit, she said.

Bumble Bee eventually offered $10,000 to settle the case. Walker refused because by that time her dental bills and legal bills would have taken most of that settlement, she said.

The case went to trial in December and two days later Walker lost. In part, it was bad timing, she said.

“It was Christmas - the jury didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to be there,” Walker said.

Bumble Bee since has received a judgment against Walker for about $2,000 of its costs. Walker’s attorney has negotiated a deal so she can instead pay $200 and drop her right to appeal. She will do that Monday.

The Food and Drug Administration says it gets the occasional complaint about struvite crystals. Sue Hutchcroft, an FDA spokesman, said she never has heard of the crystal breaking a tooth but “because it appears to be glass it could probably do that.”

Bumble Bee says the crystals are soft, and easily broken with a fingernail. They come from minerals that are naturally a part of the tuna and form when unsalted cans of tuna are cooked during processing.

The crystals are much like “crystals in sugar or crystals in grape jelly,” said Dick Pasek of Bumble Bee, “It’s a very soft crystal - no harder than table salt,” Pasek said.

The crystals are found in canned shrimp and other seafood, he said. The tuna industry adds a dash of phosphate to most canned tuna to prevent the crystals from forming.

That can’t be done in diet tuna - which is a small portion of the canned tuna on the market - because it raises the salt content, Pasek said.

Walker, meanwhile, continues to be frustrated. The pain in her jaw at one time was so bad she contemplated having all of the lower teeth on one side of her mouth pulled.

As it is, “I don’t chew my food thoroughly because I can’t chew on that side of my mouth,” she said, “and there’s the resulting digestive problems.”

“I’m real disappointed.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo