James Holloway Sr. walked out of his unit at Marcis Pointe Apartments, a Jacksonville senior living complex, around 6 p.m. on March 20 and never came back. The 85-year-old, who had dementia, was found drowned the next morning in one of the property's three retention ponds after police search teams combed the grounds. Now his family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing the complex's owner and manager of leaving that pond dangerously exposed.
The complaint, filed September 1 in Duval County Circuit Court, names property owner NVC-103rd Street, Ltd. and property manager Wendover Management, LLC, and seeks damages exceeding $50,000, according to WJXT News4JAX. Holloway's family alleges the pond was not properly maintained or secured and that its steep slope should have required a fence, per the same report. His daughter, Latonya Stewart, said her father “did not deserve to die at the bottom of a pond,” and told the station her family could not have an open-casket funeral for him.
The lawsuit's central argument goes beyond ordinary landlord negligence. Because Marcis Pointe Apartments was marketed exclusively as a 55-plus senior living complex, the family's attorneys argue management owed a heightened duty of care to protect elderly residents who may leave their units at night while not fully lucid from unbarriered retention ponds, according to Action News Jax. The complex advertises indoor accessibility features for its older residents, including bathroom grab bars and emergency call systems, yet its grounds contain three open stormwater ponds with no perimeter fencing, according to Jacksonville Today.
Attorney Says a Fence Would Have Cost Far Less Than a Life
Adam Finkel, an attorney with the Haggard Law Firm representing the Holloway family, said the cost of building a fence is far less than the cost of a human life. He argued adding barriers would be inexpensive compared with the loss of life, per WJXT News4JAX. Neither Wendover Management nor the property owner had responded to the station's request for comment as of publication, and neither has filed formal court pleadings, per Jacksonville Today.
Finkel's firm has handled this kind of case before. It previously secured a $2 million pre-suit policy limit settlement in July against a Jacksonville property owners association tied to the April 2025 retention pond drowning of a four-year-old child, according to The Haggard Law Firm, a case Hoodline covered in 2025.
City Council Forms Drowning Prevention Committee
Holloway's death is one of several Jacksonville drownings tied to retention ponds this year, and the pattern has finally pushed city government to act. Two children with autism drowned in separate retention ponds in August within the district represented by City Councilman Reggie Gaffney Jr., and Gaffney has said he wants residents to feel safe in their neighborhoods and around ponds and lakes. One of those deaths, a 3-year-old girl, was reported on by Hoodline last month.
Jacksonville City Council President Nick Howland officially created the Special Committee on Drowning Prevention on September 1, appointing Gaffney as chair alongside Council Members Tyrona Clark-Murray and Mike Gay, with a final report due by December 31, according to Jacksonville Today. Gaffney has said legislation could help prevent similar tragedies and that the issue affects residents of all ages. Before the committee's creation, Gaffney convened an August 25 public meeting bringing together medical officials, property developers, and parents of autistic children to discuss physical barriers, vegetation buffers, and pond slope modifications.
Florida's Slope and Fencing Rules, and an Open Legal Question
Florida Department of Environmental Protection and regional water management district standards call for stormwater retention ponds to maintain shoreline slopes no steeper than 3:1 in most cases, and to include perimeter fencing or safety barriers when water depths exceed four feet or bank slopes are steep, according to RSP Engineers. Those benchmarks sit at the center of the dispute over whether Marcis Pointe's pond should have been fenced in the first place.
The stakes extend well beyond one complex. Florida recorded a record 120 childhood drowning deaths in 2025, and public health experts at Nicklaus Children's Hospital warned in July that the state was on pace for another record year after tracking at least 74 childhood drownings through the first seven months of 2026, according to WLRN. Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for Florida children ages 1 to 4, and children with autism face a drowning risk up to 160 times higher than neurotypical children, per the same report.
Retention ponds have been tied to several drownings across Jacksonville this year, cutting across age groups from toddlers to elderly residents like Holloway. Whether the new city committee can actually mandate fencing retrofits remains unresolved, since most retention ponds sit on privately owned apartment or HOA land rather than public property — a legal gray area the committee is expected to confront before delivering recommendations on barriers, fencing and public education by the end of December.
