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A worker uses a suction hose to remove oil washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon spill in Belle Terre, La., on June 9, 2010.

LONDON -- Hopes that BP can settle early out of court on liability for its 2010 U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil spill looked forlorn on Wednesday after U.S. prosecutors laid out a legal case for gross negligence on which tens of billions of dollars hang.

In the two years that have passed since the spewing Macondo deep-water well was capped, the Department of Justice has made it clear BP may have a gross negligence case to answer -- implying a potential $21 billion fine on top of other payments,  some already made, others yet to be determined.

The British oil company has been vehement in denying such liability for the United States' worst offshore environmental disaster, which killed 11 people and poured crude into the sea for months. It repeated that position after the DoJ filing on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the parties have been in talks about a multi-billion-dollar settlement that could cover outstanding liabilities, and two months ago the Financial Times raised expectations there was a deal in the air by reporting that BP was hoping to pay $15 billion to put the case behind it, while the DoJ was holding out for $25 billion.

The window of opportunity for a deal before the November presidential election and ahead of a trial scheduled to start in January has narrowed since then, and now investors see the weight of uncertainty on the British oil company's share price sticking around for a long time to come.

"The market was hoping that some sort agreement would be reached, either before the presidential elections or ahead of the trial," said Ivor Pether, a fund manager at Royal London Asset Management.

"We don't know when or whether they will reach agreement, but the aggressive language in today's DOJ statement might well reduce the chances of a swift settlement."

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BP shares were down 4 percent on Wednesday morning after 39 pages of DoJ court papers homed in on a key well pressure test, saying the way it had been "so stunningly, blindingly botched in so many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence."

Uncertainty over whether BP can continue to operate in Russia, and whether it can even exit its business there at a decent price, have combined with the oil spill wrangle to put BP's share valuation based on earnings at a discount to the sector in Europe, even though it is the second largest next to Royal Dutch/Shell .

"While these (DoJ) accusations are not entirely new or surprising, they appear to be a firming of the DoJ language," said Credit Suisse analyst Kim Fustier in a note.

"This suggests to us that a settlement acceptable to BP is not imminent, and lowers BP's chances of settling in the low end of the $15 (billion)-$25 billion range. Hence, if it cannot get to a satisfactory agreement we think it might be best for BP to continue to litigate, which would maintain the Macondo overhang for longer than we'd hoped. ... We believe a settlement or $20 billion or less would be a positive."

Breakup talk revived
Pressure for closure on the spill and in Russia is something chief executive Bob Dudley has become used to since he took over from Tony Hayward in the aftermath of the spill.

And on Wednesday, one analyst revived suggestions that the company should be broken up to release underlying value on the business.

"We reiterate that the best outcome for long-suffering BP shareholders, and indeed the only credible route to unlock our increased SoTP (sum-of-the-parts) value … is a demerger of remaining assets starting with the U.S.," said Investec analyst Stuart Joyner in a note.

Joyner said that valuation would be more than 68 percent higher than BP's current share price, and suggests there could be $90 billion of hidden value in a stock valued at around $132 billion. Other analysts' calculations based on pre-Macondo comparisons with rival Shell have put total lost value at between $60 billion and $70 billion.

"BP died when it failed to cap the Macondo spill in the first few days," said Joyner. "The CEO did a good job of saving BP from forced liquidation, but we do not believe he can revert to its pre-Macondo strategy." 

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Larry Downing / Reuters file

Can you name these Supreme Court justices? Take our quiz below.

The Supreme Court has been making big headlines this summer, both with its split decision to upheld one part of a tough Arizona immigration law while striking down three other parts, and its decision to upheld the 2010 health care law, thus preserving President Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

Supreme Court upholds health care law

In the latter ruling, the majority opinion held that the Affordable Care Act was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax. In the ruling on Arizona's immigration law, the part that the justices upheld requires police officers stopping someone to make efforts to verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government.

Scalia: Judges should interpret words, not intent

High court strikes down key parts of Arizona immigration law

Despite all the media attention, a national survey by FindLaw.com, a legal information Web site, found that nearly two-thirds of Americans can't name any of the nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States. In fact, results show that only 34 percent of Americans can name any member of the nation's highest court, and only one percent can correctly name all nine justices.

"Recent rulings, particularly the decision upholding health care reform, have brought more attention to the U.S. Supreme Court than we've seen in past years," said Stephanie Rahlfs, an attorney and editor at FindLaw.com. "However, the High Court issues its rulings as a collective body. While justices can and do issue individual concurring and dissenting opinions, court sessions are conducted without TV cameras and deliberations take place behind closed doors. So while the decisions often have significant and lasting impact, the justices themselves are generally not very visible nor well known to the public as individuals."

Could you pass the US citizenship test?

The court's chief justice was the most well-known, but even he could only be named by 20 percent of the 1,000 Americans surveyed by FindLaw.com.

Do you think you can name all of the Supreme Court justices? Take the quiz below and share your results in the comments.

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A federal judge sharply critical of New York City police tactics granted class-action status to a lawsuit claiming officers’ stop-and-frisk policy discriminates against blacks and Latinos.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan said in a written ruling that there was "overwhelming evidence" that the centralized stop-and-frisk program led to thousands of unlawful stops. She noted that the vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never file a lawsuit in response, and she said class-action status was created for just these kinds of court cases.

The ruling comes on the heels of last weekend’s revelation by the Police Department that it made 601,055 street stops of potential suspects last year, with about 10 percent of the stops resulting in arrests. In 2009, there were 575,304 stops. Police conducted more than 200,000 frisk searches in the first three months of this year, it said.

Earlier: New York cops boost stop-and-frisks despite criticism

Thousands of people who were stopped could now join the lawsuit, originally filed in 2008 by four plaintiffs.

The lawsuit alleged that the Police Department purposefully engaged in a widespread practice of concentrating its stop-and-frisk activity on black and Latino neighborhoods based on their racial composition rather than legitimate non-racial factors. The lawsuit said officers are pressured to meet quotas as part of the program and are punished if they do not.

Scheindlin said she found it "disturbing" that the city responded to the lawsuit by saying that a court order to stop the practice would amount to "judicial intrusion" and that an injunction couldn't guarantee the end of “suspicionless” stops.

"First, suspicionless stops should never occur," Scheindlin wrote. She said the department's "cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a 'widespread practice of suspicionless stops' displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights."

She called it "rather audacious" of the Police Department to argue that legislators already would have passed necessary laws if it were possible to protect people from unlawful searches and seizures.

She added that if the department was engaging in a widespread practice of unlawful stops, then an injunction seeking to curb that practice is not the "judicial intrusion into a social institution" that the city claims it would be but "a vindication of the Constitution and an exercise of the courts' most important function: protecting individual rights in the face of the government's malfeasance."

The city law office said in a statement: "We respectfully disagree with the decision and (are) reviewing our legal options."

Darius Charney, who argued the case on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit legal organization, said: "We're very pleased. We think she clearly got everything right on the law."

This article includes reporting by NBCNewYork.com and msnbc.com's Jim Gold.

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Stephen Lam / Reuters, file

Members of the Oakland Police department form a line during a confrontation with Occupy Oakland demonstrators on January 28, 2012.

Oakland police used "an overwhelming military-type response" to disperse Occupy Oakland demonstrators and fired at a former Marine and Iraq war veteran who was critically injured in the clashes in October, according to a report issued on Monday.

The federal court monitor tracking reforms in the Oakland Police Department came one day before anti-Wall Street protesters plan nationwide rallies on May 1, with Occupy Oakland demonstrators vowing to take over San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

Oakland's police practices came under intense scrutiny last year when former Marine Scott Olsen was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister.

The report concludes, for the first time from an official source, that police did fire at and hit Olsen that evening. An Oakland Police Department SWAT team member fired a beanbag round at Olsen, striking him in the head, according to the report.

"We have viewed many official and unofficial video clips of the Occupy Oakland-related incidents," the report said. "These recordings lead us to ask additional questions as the level of force that was used by OPD officers, and whether that use of force was in compliance with the Department's use of force policies."

Exclusive "Occupy" interview: Scott Olsen on MSNBC's The Ed Show

The beanbag rounds fired that night leave a green residue, which was found on the hat Olsen was wearing that night, later retrieved by police, according to the report.

The monitor, Robert Warshaw, said the court-ordered reforms, many of them related to how the department polices its officers, have gone backward during the past year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

'Thoroughly dismayed'
Olsen's case reinvigorated the Occupy movement against economic inequality, and the confrontations with police in subsequent protests turned Oakland into a focal point for the movement as demonstrators rallied against what they described as police brutality.

Jay Finneburgh / AP, file

Scott Olsen lays on the ground bleeding from a head wound after being struck by a projectile on October 25, 2011.

The Oakland Police Department has been subject to court-ordered external monitoring and review since the 2003 settlement of what was known as the Riders case, in which four officers were accused of planting evidence, fabricating police reports and using unlawful force, according to the Oakland police.

Injured vet spent days at work, nights at protest

Monday's report was the latest in a series designed to monitor and enforce compliance with the court-ordered reforms, known as the Negotiated Settlement Agreement.

"We were, in some instances, satisfied with the performance of the Department; yet in others, we were thoroughly dismayed by what we observed," monitor Warshaw wrote.

The police department announced last week that it was making significant changes to how it trains officers to control large crowds following criticism over its practices during Occupy Oakland protests that sometimes turned violent. It received more than 1,000 misconduct complaints during those protests.

"OPD has turned the corner," Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said in a statement upon the report's release. "My vision is to make Oakland one of the safer major cities in California." 

The police department's critics of the department said the report brought the force closer to a federal takeover, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Stagnation is troubling. After nine years, more progress should be made," John Burris, one of two attorneys who brought a civil suit a decade ago that led to court oversight, told the newspaper. "We must seriously explore the next step."

Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

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