Yes, that should be relatively easy to implement. We just have to
figure out what would the best place where to handle the timeouts,
especially with the fresh support for multicall (still needs some
polishing).

Pasting Brano's implementation brainstorming for future reference:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
import signal
import nitrate

class TimeoutException(Exception):
    pass

def get_it(timeout):
    def timeout_handler(signum, frame):
        raise TimeoutException()

    old_handler = signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, timeout_handler)
    signal.alarm(timeout)

    tc = nitrate.TestCase(76191)
    tc.notes = "jdfgdfglfdjgkldfjgldfjglfdjgldfjgljdfgbndjfbnvdfvfdvfdv"

    try:
        tc.update()
        return True
    except TimeoutException:
        return False
    finally:
        signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, old_handler)

    signal.alarm(0)
    return name

if __name__ == '__main__':
    try:
        print str(get_it(1))
    except TimeoutException:
        print "Timeout."

    try:
        print str(get_it(5))
    except TimeoutException:
        print "Timeout."