Bogged down by last-minute deposition requests, a flurry of 11th-hour motions and the sluggish pace at which civil litigation generally moves, the auto negligence lawsuit against William "Billy" Nichols Jr. has been delayed for a third time.
Although the trial was scheduled to begin today, a circuit judge chose to postpone it until January rather than flirt with the possibility of appellate admonishment down the road.
"This case isn't going to be reversed because of procedural debates," Circuit Judge Brian Lambert said recently as lawyers on both sides squabbled over matters like the timely meeting of discovery deadlines and the unexpected announcement of new witnesses.
While legal counsel seemed worn down, if somewhat unsurprised by the judge's order to push back the trial date, no one looked more defeated than the plaintiff, Adrian "Stretch" Cummings.
"I'm broken-hearted," said the Vietnam War veteran, his tall and lanky frame hunched in disappointment. "I want some final closure on this and they won't give it to me. I just want justice."
It's been nearly five years since that fateful Nov. 26, 2004, morning when Cummings' wife, Nancy, 55, and daughter Holly, 25, were killed.
Nichols' Ford F-250 pickup crossed over the center lane and smashed into their Ford Tempo, crushing the two women to death.
Nichols' blood-alcohol content, taken two hours after the crash, registered at 0.103 and 0.104; the point at which a driver is presumed to be impaired is 0.08.
Paramedics recalled a near-hysterical Nichols in the aftermath. But if the wreck left Nichols - the sole survivor - dazed, the verdict at his criminal trial left a community stunned.
A Marion County jury acquitted the Ocala Water Spots Surf Ski and Skate Shop owner on two counts of DUI manslaughter. A circuit judge dropped two additional counts of vehicular homicide.
It was a controversial acquittal that reverberated across town in the form of angry letters to the editor, furious blog posts and general disbelief in the criminal justice system.
But there was chance yet for Cummings, the 61-year-old widower who stretches more than 6 feet tall, to find solace in the justice system.
A year after the deaths, in November 2005, Cummings filed a civil complaint against Nichols, alleging the business owner was negligent in causing the accident by being intoxicated and failing to maintain control of his vehicle.
Seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, the lawsuit wended its way through the civil docket, going through at least one judge change, and reams of electronically filed paperwork.
Almost immediately after Nichols' October 2007 acquittal on his criminal charges, his civil defense attorney sought a change of venue in the civil trial due to pretrial publicity.
On Sept. 4, Judge Lambert finally heard that motion and denied it by raising the inevitable O.J. Simpson analogy.
"Where did they try [Simpson's] civil case? They didn't go to San Francisco, did they?" the judge asked defense attorney Michael Donsky.
Los Angeles-area juries heard the criminal and civil cases against the football star.
Lambert will allow for prospective jurors to be individually questioned concerning their knowledge of the two-year-old criminal case.
No mention of Nichols' arrest or his subsequent criminal prosecution will be allowed at his civil trial.
But it will be a while until jury selection even begins.
Over the next several months, attorneys will have the opportunity to depose new witnesses, such as Earle Traynam, an economist whom plaintiff's attorney Scott Parks noticed as a witness just days before the discovery cutoff date. It was a last-minute filing that incurred the wrath of both the judge and opposing counsel.
"We wanted [the trial] over," defense attorney Donsky said. "There's not nearly much more we had to do."
Parks will call on Traynam to assess the potential future earnings of Nancy Cummings. She and her daughter were nurses at Leesburg Regional Medical Center.
The mother-daughter pair were on their to work when the crash occurred in Ocklawaha early in the morning.
Another reason for the trial's continuance was Parks' delayed request to depose two defense witnesses: Stephen Curry and Leonard Masten,
"He waits to tell me he needs two of my experts for depositions when they've been available forever," Donsky told the judge with a sigh earlier this month.
Those witnesses - a pharmacologist and toxicologist, respectively - played a prominent role in Nichols' defense during the criminal trial.
According to a former jury member, one of the main reasons for Nichols' acquittal was the introduction at trial of a medical phenomenon known as delayed gastric emptying. Nichols, now 45, supposedly experienced this medical condition at the time of the crash.
That was the "big, major thing" that led Josephine Eckert and her fellow jurors to reach their not-guilty verdict.
That theory helped debunk the notion that Nichols, a one-time champion barefoot skier, was actually intoxicated, and therefore criminally negligent, when he was behind the wheel in November 2004.
Nichols consumed at least five beers and five ounces of Crown Royal whiskey on Thanksgiving, which was the day prior to the accident. He also ate a large greasy meal, the contents of which, the experts said, decreased Nichols' gastric emptying time.
Masten testified that the combination of the alcohol and food, followed shortly thereafter by sleep, had caused Nichols' pyloric valve - which processes alcohol into the bloodstream - to close and not reopen until after the crash.
That scientific theory, though largely scorned by the public, convinced the jury. Eckert said the decision still weighs heavily on her.
"I hope I never have to make a decision like that again," she said. "I get a real sick feeling when I see [Nichols'] business when I pass it."
In the civil action, Nichols' defense lawyer asserts his client was not at fault in the accident, that it was a mechanical failure on his Ford truck and the road's improper maintenance that caused Nichols to swerve into the oncoming lane and lose control of his vehicle.
Adrian Cummings isn't buying it. The accident would have been preventable "except that [Nichols] was drunk," he said late last year.
Cummings, who lives in the Ocala National Forest and occasionally speaks before the Marion County Victim Impact Panel, declined to sit for an extended interview, but has remained a fixture in court during the many hearings.
Nichols, who is not required to be present, has been noticeably absent.
"I haven't missed a date yet. I have an obligation to my family," Cummings said earlier this month. "It's hard and it hurts but if it [the lawsuit] makes one person think before they get behind the wheel of a car, it hurts less," he added.
The war veteran, who met and married his wife upon returning from Vietnam, was left widowed and daughterless after the accident, but has a son who lives nearby who is in his mid-30s. The father expresses hope that come January, a jury will see his side.
"I hope after this verdict, I can say the Pledge of Allegiance in Marion County," he said.
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