The revelation that BP's Texas City refinery emitted toxic benzene for more than a month has ignited a furor in the port community that has suffered its share of deadly industrial accidents and toxic spills.

Thousands of residents who fear they may have been exposed to the known carcinogen released at the oil refinery from April 6 to May 16 have been flooding parking lots and conference halls where local trial attorneys hosted information sessions and sought clients for class-action lawsuits against the oil giant.

BP faces the new challenge just as it is reaching a key milestone in another crisis — plugging the Gulf of Mexico well that blew out in an oil spill disaster that is costing the company billions of dollars.

On Wednesday, more than 3,400 people lined the hallways and sidewalks around the Nessler Center to sign on to a $10 billion class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Galveston federal court by Friendswood attorney Anthony Buzbee.

The lawsuit alleges the release of 500,000 pounds of chemicals - including 17,000 pounds of benzene - has jeopardized the health and property values of people who live and work in the area. At the nearby College of the Mainland, a separate town hall meeting drew a crowd of 600.

A federal appeals court on Friday granted Dish Network Corp. a rare, full-court review of a ruling it had earlier lost to TiVo Inc., one that could have resulted in the satellite TV company disabling millions of digital video recorders.

Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington breathed new life into litigation that Dish has consistently lost to TiVo. Dish's decision to seek an "en banc" review was seen as CEO Charlie Ergen's last straw effort as damages mounted. Ergen had even believed that the appeals court was unlikely to grant it.

Shares of DVR pioneer TiVo fell by $6.52, or 37.5 percent, to $10.87 in midday trading. Dish rose by $1.22, or 5.6 percent, to $23.18.

But it's uncertain whether Dish will have eventual victory given that TiVo has prevailed in a series of other court rulings.

TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for patent infringement over a technology that stored and retrieved video on DVRs, which lets viewers pause, rewind and replay live TV. Dish lost the case on appeal, paid TiVo $104.6 million in damages and interest and was barred from using the technology.

Oprah Winfrey’s production company wants a federal judge to force a prominent Boston law firm to provide information about one of its former attorneys to bolster its case in a patent-infringement lawsuit against her book club.

The lawsuit poses serious threats to the entire publishing industry, according to Harpo Productions attorney Charles Babcock.

Winfrey’s Harpo filed a motion last week to compel Fish & Richardson to hand over documents and give a deposition regarding Scott Harris, a former patent prosecution attorney in its San Diego office.

Harpo is being sued by Illinois Computer Research, a Chicago holding company that bought Harris’ 2006 patent for Internet technology that allows readers to review digital excerpts from books prior to buying them. Harpo claims the patent is unenforceable. The case is set for a July trial in Illinois.

Harpo wants Fish to comply with a subpoena, because it was party to a similar patent lawsuit that ICR filed against Google, then a Fish client, in 2007.

ICR, which is tied to Harris, added Fish as a defendant in that lawsuit after Fish forced Harris’ resignation several days following its filing.

In court documents, Fish claimed Harris used Fish resources to build a portfolio of patents and cash in on them by selling them to parties that he knew would file infringement cases against companies that included his own law firm’s clients. The suit was settled in 2008.

The Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman on death row in Texas for killing a young mother.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a woman whose child she also snatched in Houston in 2001. Carty has complained that her trial lawyers were deficient.

The British government and human rights groups have aided Carty's cause.

Carty is one of 10 condemned women in Texas. She is a former teacher from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands.

In September, a taped voice recording of Carty begging Britons to help save her life was broadcast into London's Trafalgar Square.

A bookkeeper in Wichita has been sentenced to four years and three months in federal prison for embezzling more than $948,000 from a law firm where she worked.

Thirty-four-year-old Vicki J. Olivarez pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of writing checks and forging signatures on the checks while she worked at Pistotnik Law Offices.

In her plea, Olivarez admitted that from 2004 through 2009 she wrote numerous checks on the firm's client trust account and deposited the money into her personal accounts. She used some of the money to make payments on property she owned in Andover.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten also ordered Olivarez to forfeit $948,041 including her interest in the Andover property.