Becky Carroll was missing a few teeth, and others were stained or crooked. Ashamed, she smiled with lips pressed closed. Her dentist offered to fix most of her teeth with root canals and crowns, Carroll said, but she was wary of traveling a long road of dental work.

Then Carroll saw a TV commercial for another path: ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers. The company advertises that it can give patients “a new smile in as little as one day” by surgically replacing teeth instead of fixing them.

So Carroll saved and borrowed for the surgery, she said. In an interview and a lawsuit, Carroll said that at a ClearChoice clinic in New Jersey in 2021, she agreed to pay $31,000 to replace all her natural upper teeth with pearly-white prosthetic ones. What came next, Carroll said, was “like a horror movie.”

Carroll alleged that her anesthesia wore off during implant surgery, so she became conscious as her teeth were removed and titanium screws were twisted […]