Cleared: East Baton Rouge Parish’s district attorney has ruled that parish sheriff’s deputies acted in self-defense and were legally justified in the February fatal shooting a man who tried to flee by ramming a car into a deputy’s vehicle. As The Associated Press reports, District Attorney Hillar Moore III announced today that his office ruled out any criminal charges against four deputies who fired shots at Travis Stevenson during the Feb. 23 confrontation. Moore says evidence gathered by Louisiana State Police investigators showed one of the deputies was caught between Stevenson’s accelerating car, a parked car and an apartment building at the time of the shooting. Moore says deputies fired 21 shots at Stevenson, who had seven gunshot wounds. Stevenson was a 48-year-old black man; all four deputies who fired shots are white.
Agreement reached: Environmental attorneys and a New Orleans energy company agreed today to work out differences over the confidentiality of documents related to an ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil leak from an offshore site damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. As The Associated Press reports, environmental groups including Waterkeeper Alliance, Apalachicola Riverkeeper and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network agreed in federal court with Taylor Energy to negotiate supplemental language for a 2015 settlement agreement over how and when to release information on Taylor’s response to the leak. At issue are volumes of documents that Taylor Energy says include confidential information about oil spill containment technology developed for the company.
Uphill battle: Wells Fargo customers who join a class-action lawsuit filed last week against the bank may struggle to get their case heard in court, consumer advocates tell NBC News, because of mandatory arbitration contract clauses that can protect banks from class-action suits. “These clauses are hidden in boilerplate contracts,” says David Seligman, an attorney and contributor to the National Consumer Law Center. “They often require you to bring disputes in to private arbitration, and almost always force you to bring them individually.” Customers filed a class-action lawsuit against the bank last week over allegations that accounts and credits cards were opened or applied in customers’ names without authorization from those customers. Legal experts say a 5-year-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling says it’s legal for companies to shield themselves from lawsuits—even in Wells Fargo’s case—by requiring that customers address grievances through a private arbitration system. Since then, consumers seeking redress from banks have been stopped at the courthouse door. Read the full story.
