LAWSUITS FILED OVER ALLEGED ATTACK AT AIRPORT

LAWSUITS FILED OVER ALLEGED ATTACK AT AIRPORT

By WILLIAM SNOWDEN Editor

Two lawsuits were recently filed in Wakulla Circuit Court dealing with the confrontation between Randall Dick and volunteer airport manager Steve Fults outside a hangar back on May 2, 2019.
Dick was reportedly moving belongings out of the hangar and reportedly cut across the airport taxiway in a truck. Fults went to tell Dick to stop doing that.
Fults claims Dick tried to run over him in the truck, and that Dick came out of the truck with a crescent wrench. Fults took Dick to the ground and choked him out.
In a lawsuit filed a couple of weeks ago, Dick claims that he was “battered and strangled... to the point of unconsciousness, causing him serious physical and emotional injuries.”
The suit was filed by Orlando attorney Elizabeth Hagood of the firm Hagood & Hagood.
At about the same time, Dick and friend Bill Catalina filed a pro se lawsuit against county commissioners and Administrator David Edwards, and the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office.
That lawsuit claims Catalina warned commissioners about Fults’ behavior before the alleged attack on Dick, saying he was belligerent and bullying. The lawsuit claims actual damages of $10 million, and asks the court to award unlimited damages for assault and battery and punitive damages.
Dick and Catalina are representing themselves in that lawsuit. (As a note, the lawsuit complaint in the pro se case refers to Fults throughout as “Defendant Fults,” but he is not included in the listing of defendants.)
Catalina was not present at the confrontation between Fults and Dick, yet has for years pushed for some reaction from law enforcement and county government. There were never criminal charges filed in the matter – and that has outraged Catalina, who has railed against the detective who investigated the matter. Catalina reiterates in the new lawsuit that the sheriff’s office did nothing to stop Fults from going on a weekslong cruise, though the investigation was open.
Back in 2019, shortly after the confrontation, then-Chief Prosecutor Brian Miller  (now county judge) refused to prosecute the case due to a lack of evidence and independent witnesses.
Catalina and Dick filed a motion for injunction for protection against Fults, but then-Wakulla Circuit Judge John Cooper refused to grant it, instead telling the men to all avoid each other.
Catalina claimed he had video from a game camera that showed Fults was the aggressor, but he has never turned it over. The sheriff’s office requested the camera card and said they would get FDLE to extract the data off of it – but they have never received it.
At the time of the 2019 events, Fults was 57 years old, Dick was 66 and Catalina was 70.
At the county commission meeting on May 15, County Attorney Heather Encinosa indicated that the Florida Association of Counties would defend the lawsuit.
Editor’s Note: In full disclosure, Catalina has made donations to the Florida Press Foundation in support of The Wakulla Sun; and Fults has placed business advertisements in the newspaper.