CRASH VICTIM'S FAMILY FIGHTS TO CHANGE LAW

Drugged Driving

Mike Holliday was in a good mood that Friday evening 20 months ago when he
dined with his wife, Donna, and another couple at Cafe St. Clair on
Pickwick Lake 115 miles east of Memphis.

The 54-year-old founder of the Holliday's Fashions women's clothing stores
was looking forward to a Labor Day at the house where he, his wife and
their three sons had spent many weekends.

"He was happy and excited about being up there for the week," says close
friend John Meeks, a Memphis businessman. "He had really just gotten the
business and his life to a point where he was going to be able to slow down
and enjoy life."

But the weekend was soon to turn tragic.

As Holliday and his wife left the restaurant that is nestled in a
picturesque harbor among hundreds of yachts, pontoons and ski boats, Meeks
and his wife, Sandra, followed in their car.

It was approaching 8:30 p.m. and now dark and raining.

Less than a mile up the winding tan asphalt of Tenn. 57, Holliday hit the
brakes of his white Isuzu Trooper. The unloaded trailer of an oncoming
logging truck had crossed into his northbound lane as it rounded a downhill
curve.

"I saw the top of Mike's car explode and it had stopped and was actually
coming back at me," recalls Meeks, who still has difficulty talking about
that night. "With the lights and the glass and the rain it was like an
evil, sort of horrible thing to witness. My brain just could not compute
what was happening."

Holliday was killed instantly. Donna Holliday, also 54, who was in the
passenger seat, suffered serious head injuries, a broken pelvis, a broken
collarbone and ligament damage to her neck and spine.

The trailer rotated counterclockwise as it rode up and over the Trooper,
coming to rest across both lanes of traffic. It separated from the Mack
tractor, which spun off the road and into a depression between two private
drives.

Driver James D. Epperson, 45, of Tishomingo, Miss., was not seriously injured.

Tennessee Highway Patrol investigators concluded the crash occurred because
the logging truck's trailer was in the wrong lane.

Blood tests showed Epperson had marijuana ingredients in his blood.

A records check showed he had been charged with 30 driving-related offenses
since 1992, including driving while impaired, speeding, running a stop
sign, expired tags and no mud flaps.

In the crash that killed Mike Holliday, Epperson was charged with nothing.
There was no criminal indictment, no traffic citation.

Troopers who observed Epperson at the crash scene saw no sign of
impairment. A state prosecutor said there was no sign of recklessness.

Holliday's family was stunned. The sons pressed state prosecutors for some
type of charge but got nowhere.

"You have a situation where somebody's clearly in the wrong and he's killed
somebody close to you," says Brad Holliday, 32, the oldest of the three
sons. "But the authorities don't find it within their power or aren't
willing to exercise their power to make sure justice is served."

Now they're trying to turn their personal tragedy and their frustration
with the legal system into a tribute to their father's memory. The family
is trying to get state lawmakers to establish a drugged-driving law that
might make it easier to prosecute offenders.

"We want to make it a little more clear-cut for them, to close the
loopholes," says Holliday, whose brothers are Clay, 29, and Andrew, 25. "An
injustice was done to my parents and to society as a whole when someone is
allowed to escape a situation like this without punishment."

A charmed life

If Michael Edward Holliday seemed to lead a charmed life, it was largely
his own doing.

He was a star athlete, a military veteran and a former nondenominational
seminarian. He also was an entrepreneur who started with a vacant building
in Millington in the mid-'70s and built a $25-million-a-year women's
apparel business.

"He wasn't a guy who had everything in life given to him," said Meeks.
"What he had and what he accumulated he did it on his own."

Holliday's Fashions now has 23 stores with 350 employees in five states.

"In business he was something of a visionary," says Jules Wakschal of New
York, a resident buyer for a number of clothing stores, including
Holliday's for 23 years. "He had a terrific eye for fashion. I would tease
him that he was going to be the biggest one-man business around because
even with all his employees he drove the business with his ideas."

Holliday made monthly trips to New York to meet with Wakschal, survey the
fashion world and negotiate deals. Wakschal says Holliday treated
associates and employees like family.

"He was admired not only by his wife and his family," adds Wakschal, "but
by everybody in the industry."

In August 2001, Holliday and friend Grant Fenner made an ambitious 110-mile
circumnavigation by sea kayak of Isle Royale on Lake Superior near the
Ontario/Minnesota border. High winds, high waves and angry thunderstorms
were their constant companions for the week. Holliday thrived on it.

From an entry in his journal dated Aug. 14: "I was surprised at how high
the swells were so early. The wind was strong and it was already raining -
the clouds seemed to make it impossible for God to see us in case we needed
help - a real possibility today."

Later that month, on Friday, Aug. 31, it was raining again as Holliday
headed down a two-lane highway near Pickwick Lake in Hardin County.

Donna Holliday told of her loss in a recent E-mail:

"My sons have been a great source of strength for me. They lost so much, a
father, a mentor, a friend. Mike was the kind of man that you called for
advice or help with anything, or to share an adventure and always just for fun.

"The boys also put their own lives on hold to help me recover physically
and emotionally. Some days I see a light above the clouds and some days are
very dark, but I know that God will bring me out of this nightmare. I pray
that something good, something that might save another person's life will
come out of our loss."

Alcohol proof easiest

In Tennessee, driving under the influence includes not only alcohol, but
also any other intoxicant, narcotic or other drug, including prescription,
that produces central nervous system effects.

Proving the influence of alcohol is the easiest because there is a
measurable limit - .10 now, .08 starting July 1 - at which a driver is
presumed to be intoxicated.

Most states, including Tennessee have no comparable measurement to use when
other drugs are involved.

"A driver is much less likely to be prosecuted for impaired driving under
the influence of illegal drugs than under the influence of a legal
substance, alcohol," says Michael Walsh, PhD, of Bethesda, Md., a former
director of the President's Drug Advisory Council.

Sixteen states have some form of comparable measurement - called per se
laws - for determining when a driver is in automatic violation of the DUI
statute. Eight of those states have zero tolerance laws that ban the
presence of any prohibited substance.

"Typically in a state like Tennessee the prosecutor would have to prove
that the guy was impaired because of the drug. That's a very high standard
to link the impairment directly to the drug. It's hard to prove and that's
why the per se law makes it easier," Walsh says.

In Nevada, 21-year-old Jessica Williams was sentenced to 18 to 48 years in
prison after she was convicted of killing six teenagers in 2000 while
driving with marijuana in her system that exceeded the amount allowed by
state law.

Defense lawyers say the drug limit does not necessarily mean a driver is
impaired. In fact, jurors did not convict Williams for being impaired, but
for having the prohibited substance in her blood.

(The conviction was upheld on appeal in state and federal courts, but a
trial judge last month granted Williams a new trial saying the law does not
identify one of the marijuana byproducts as an illegal substance.)

The 1999 Nevada law says a driver with 2 nanograms or more of marijuana's
active ingredient, THC, per milliliter of blood is presumed to be impaired.
Williams's blood was tested at 5.5 nanograms.

In the crash that killed Holliday, a blood sample taken two hours later
from truck driver Epperson showed 32.3 nanograms of THC per milliliter of
blood.

"That would be 16 times the amount in our marijuana statute," says Gary
Booker, director of the vehicular crimes unit of the Clark County District
Attorney's Office in Las Vegas, where he prosecuted the Williams case. "It
definitely would be a case we would prosecute.

"Marijuana will be in your blood for only five, six or seven hours, so if
it was in your blood we know for sure it was recently ingested."

In a federal lawsuit the Hollidays have filed against Epperson and several
other defendants, toxicologist Dr. David Stafford said in a report he
believes the truck driver was under the influence of marijuana at the time
of the fatal crash.

Stafford, who was hired by the plaintiffs, said the THC level is consistent
with marijuana use within four to five hours prior to when the blood sample
was drawn. The effect, Stafford said, would be prolonged reaction time,
euphoria, relaxation and impairment of the ability to operate a motor vehicle.

"I would vehemently disagree with that," says attorney Joe Lee Wyatt, who
represents Epperson in the civil suit. "Obviously the highway patrol didn't
think it."

An expert he hired, physician Dr. Kevin Merigian, said there is no
laboratory data to correlate the impairment Staf ford cites with blood
levels of marijuana THC.

Further, Merigian questions the accuracy of the levels reported in
Epperson's blood sample, levels which the doctor said would mean the truck
driver would have been smoking marijuana while officers interviewed him
after the crash. "The results in this case are suspicious," the doctor said
in his report.

Epperson declined to discuss the crash, citing the pending lawsuit.

Prosecutor John Overton of Savannah, Tenn., said he considered charges of
vehicular homicide but had no evidence of reckless driving, intoxication or
impairment.

The prosecutor eventually presented the case to a grand jury for review in
March of last year, but he did not seek an indictment.

"All he (Epperson) does is hit the brakes and the trailer begins to come
around," the prosecutor said. "That's awfully hard to say that the action
in and of itself is willful and wanton disregard for the safety of persons
and property by the fact that he stepped on the brake. It just wasn't there."

But with a crash that caused a violent death, some prosecutors say they
would have had the driver indicted and let a trial jury decide whether a
crime was committed.

"Why wouldn't you?" said Shelby County Prosecutor Bobby Carter, director of
the narcotics prosecution unit. "There is criminally negligent vehicular
homicide. Driving a log truck too fast in the dark and not keeping it under
control? Maybe that would be criminal negligence. You don't need impairment."

Last November Walsh announced the results of a major state-by-state study
of laws on driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). The study showed
that there is no uniformity to laws and that while drunk drivers are
prosecuted, there are millions of drugged drivers being overlooked.

Tennessee prosecutors, including Overton, say a DUID law defining specific
limits, as with alcohol, would indeed make it easier to prosecute those
drivers.

"James 'Wally' Kirby, executive director of the Tennessee District
Attorneys General Conference in Nashville, said, "If someone brings it up,
we'll certainly take a look at it, but it really hasn't come up at this point."

The Hollidays, who have contacted legislators and other state and federal
officials, hope that will change.

"It's hard to think of anything good coming out of it," says Brad Holliday,
"but I'd hate to see somebody go through the same types of frustration that
we've been through."