Announcements | | | 2011 Reel Justice Fishing Tournament, Sep 30 - Oct 1 in Port Aransas | | Join the TTLA Advocates for our first Annual Reel Justice Fishing Tournament, and see who gets bragging rights as TTLA's fishing champion! The fun starts Friday evening with a Welcome dinner, where you'll meet your guide and pick up your tournament materials. Saturday morning at first light, it's ON! Registration fee includes boat, guide, Welcome dinner on Friday, breakfast, lunch & snacks on Saturday, tournament t-shirt, and other goodies! | Products | | | Brazilian Hair Treatment Comes Under F.D.A. Fire | | A popular hair-straightening product called Brazilian Blowout, which has received scrutiny in recent months after tests found it contains significant amounts of the harmful chemical formaldehyde, has come under new government pressure. The United States Food and Drug Administration has stepped into the fray by warning the company that its product contains a “poisonous or deleterious substance” and that it was falsely labeled as formaldehyde-free. Tara Parker, The New York Times 09/15/2011 | Read Article: The New York Times | Laws/Cases | | | Kolon Loses $920 Million Verdict to DuPont | | Kolon Industries Inc. lost a $919.9 million jury verdict to DuPont Co. over the theft of trade secrets about the manufacture of Kevlar, an anti-ballistic fiber used in police and military gear. Jurors in federal court in Richmond, Virginia found South Korea-based Kolon and its U.S. unit wrongfully obtained DuPont’s proprietary information about Kevlar by hiring some of the company’s former engineers and marketers. DuPont will pursue recovery of the award and is seeking punitive damages for each of the 149 stolen secrets, reimbursement of more than $30 million in attorney’s fees and an order barring Kolon from making products with DuPont’s information. Jef Feeley, Gary Roberts and Jack Kaskey, Bloomberg 09/15/2011 | Read Article: Bloomberg | Nashville Officer Settles with Private Prison Company | | A former Nashville Metro Police Sergeant has settled a lawsuit he filed against a private prison company over a Mississippi inmate who escaped and shot the officer five times. In June 2009, the plaintiff was shot five times by the escaped convict during a routine traffic stop. The lawsuit accused the prison company of "being negligent in its supervision" of the inmate, who escaped during a visit to the eye doctor. Brian Haas , Tennessean 09/14/2011 | Read Article: Tennessean | Couple to File Suit over Contaminated Cantaloupes | | A Colorado Springs couple has said they will file a lawsuit against Jensen Farms Inc. because the husband became ill on Aug. 30 after eating a cantaloupe produced by the company. Jensen Farms issued a recall of its Rocky Ford cantaloupes due to a potential Listeria contamination. One of the plaintiffs was taken to the hospital by ambulance and tested positive for listeria monocytogenes. Howard Pankratz, Denver Post 09/15/2011 | Read Article: Denver Post | Family Files Suit over 6-Year-Old Girl's Murder | | A West Palm Beach, Fla., couple will file a lawsuit over the slaying of their 6-year-old daughter in 2009. The couple's daughter was killed at a family gathering on Thanksgiving Day when one of the men in the family went on a murderous rampage, killing four family members. The suit says the man's parents - the defendants - were aware their son was suffering severe mental problems and should have warned the family he would be attending the gathering. Staff Report, Palm Beach Post 09/15/2011 | Read Article: Palm Beach Post | Issues | | | BP Shortcuts Led to Gulf Oil Spill, Report Says | | BP, running weeks behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget in trying to complete its troubled Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, took many shortcuts that contributed to the disastrous blowout and oil spill there last year, federal investigators concluded in a report released. The central cause of the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was a failure of the cement at the base of the 18,000-foot-deep well that was supposed to contain oil and gas within the well bore. That led to a cascade of human and mechanical errors that allowed natural gas under tremendous pressure to shoot onto the drilling platform, causing an explosion and fire that killed 11 of the 126 crew members and caused an oil spill that took 87 days to get under control. JOHN M. BRODER, The New York Times 09/15/2011 | Read Article: The New York Times | | | | |