At the December 12, 2024 meeting of the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC), former Chairman Eulis Simien, Jr., seeks a point of clarification entailing the closeout of whistleblower Carl Cavalier’s appeal of former LSP Col. Lamar Davis’ action of terminating Cavalier for speaking out to media outlets regarding the in-custody death of Ronald Greene, which occurred on or around May 9, 2019.
On July 24, 2024, as we transitioned into our extensive coverage of the Allen Stanford / OFI Baton Rouge trial, we provided our site visitors with this update on the status of former LSP Lt. John Stelly.
Followers of our blog know that we also covered whistleblower Carl Cavalier’s matter from start to finish, and we concluded our coverage (at least as it pertained to Ronald Greene) with this September 22, 2024 feature on Cavalier.
In that feature, Cavalier indicated that he’d moved on with his life with a bright outlook on his future. He indicated that the next most significant chapter in his life is graduating from law school, a milestone which is rapidly approaching!
The purpose of this feature is to provide coverage of the LSPC’s formal closure of Cavalier’s appeal and also to update everyone on the litigation of former LSP Lt. John Stelly, who sued LSP alleging that he was discriminated against during the tenure of former Col. Lamar Davis because of the fact that he is Caucasian.
First, let’s go with Cavalier.
At its December 12, 2024 meeting, the LSPC formally closed out Cavalier’s appeal. Here’s video of that formal closeout:
12/12/24: LSPC formally closes whistleblower Carl Cavalier’s appeal.
So, that’s it for the appeal of Carl Cavalier.
To be perfectly honest, we thought that, when we published this feature on August 2, 2024 entailing former LSP Lt. John Stelly, that was going to be the end of his matter as well.
As site visitors may recall, Stelly sued LSP over his contention that former LSP Col. Lamar Davis engaged in racial discrimination in failing to promote him over what Stelly contends were lesser-qualified applicants but who had minority standing vs. his own race of Caucasian.
The reason we stated our belief that the matter was concluded is that, when Federal Judge Greg Gerard Guidry signed this July 31, 2024 judgment granting LSP’s Motion for Summary Judgment, we considered his Order and Reasons for Judgment to be very strongly worded.
We provided the segment of Judge Guidry’s Reasons for Judgment which we felt constituted his most strong wording on the August 2 linked-feature above; however, in a nutshell, Judge Guidry indicated that it is not the place of the Federal Courts to be, “transformed into personnel managers.”
Our own thoughts that Stelly would face a major uphill battle if he opted to appeal (which we continue to believe is the case), did not deter him one iota from filing this August 20, 2024 Notice of Appeal of the Granting of LSP’s Motion of Summary Judgment.
LSP responded by filing this Motion to Tax Its $10,000+ in Court Costs to Stelly even as his appeal is pending.
On September 11, 2024, Stelly filed this Opposition to LSP’s taxing of such costs indicating that a couple of the costs were excessive but also asking the Court to delay such taxation until after Stelly’s appeal concluded.
On September 16, 2024, LSP filed this Reply to Stelly’s Opposition to Tax Costs indicating that Stelly had provided no rationale for why his assertion of the two items deemed “excessive” should prevail over the actual invoiced costs that LSP paid. LSP further asserted that it is “well settled” that a Federal District Court, “retains jurisdiction to tax costs, even while an appeal is pending.” LSP cited the case of, “Feria v. Winn-Dixie Montgomery, L.L.C., 753 Fed. Appx. 323, 324 (5th Cir. 2019) (citing Coward v. AC & S, Inc., 91 Fed. Appx. 919, 922 (5th Cir. 2004)),” to fortify its contention that, “There are no grounds to delay taxing costs here.”
On November 8, 2024, the Court ruled that Stelly would be taxed with costs but reduced the amount from $10,181.70 to $8,512.90.
So, that’s the update on Cavalier and Stelly. In the coming days, we’ll outline another case in which LSP has been sued in the aftermath of an unfortunate incident with the Plaintiff appearing to have essentially rolled snake eyes in that litigation.
We wish Stelly well, but we’ll reiterate our belief that he faces a major uphill battle with this one!