Full Opinion

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL STATE OF FLORIDA _____________________________ No. 1D19-4218 _____________________________ SEAN STEPHEN CHEHARDY, Appellant, v. MIKE HARRISON, as Sheriff of Gulf County, Florida, and BRIAN SMITH, individually, Appellees. _____________________________ On appeal from the Circuit Court for Gulf County. Shonna Young Gay, Judge. March 11, 2021 MAKAR, J. Sean Stephen Chehardy of Gulf County, Florida, was returning home on his farm tractor, which he had just refueled at a nearby gas station, when he called 911 to report that a neighbor was “driving in circles” in his front yard “spinning his tires.” The neighbor fled, but the responding police officer—who saw Chehardy operating his farm tractor on the roadway—arrested him for driving with a suspended license, a charge that Cherhardy contested as invalid due to a statutory exemption for the temporary operation of “farm tractors” on Florida roadways; the charges escalated but all were later dropped. Next, Chehardy sued the sheriff and the arresting officer for false arrest/imprisonment and negligence. Both defendants moved to dismiss the civil action, which the trial court granted, concluding that driving a farm tractor on a state roadway to refuel it was not a permissible use. At issue on appeal is whether Chehardy was entitled to Florida’s “farm tractor” exemption or, alternatively, whether probable cause existed for his arrest and thereby was not a basis for his tort claims. Two statutory provisions related to farm tractors are in play. One is the exemption statute, which excepts specified persons “from obtaining a driver license” including: “Any person while driving or operating any road machine, farm tractor, or implement of husbandry temporarily operated or moved on a highway.” § 322.04(1)(b), Fla. Stat. (2020) (emphasis added). Farm tractors are principally used as agricultural machines and not as modes of transportation; the exemption thereby recognizes that farm tractors may necessarily have to traverse public roadways from time to time and that their operators may not always have a driver’s license. 1 At first glance, Chehardy’s arrest would seem to be unlawful based on the language of the exemption because he was temporarily operating his farm tractor on a highway, which falls squarely within the statute’s language. The definitions section of the driver license statute, however, states that a “Farm tractor” means a motor vehicle that is: (a) Operated principally on a farm, grove, or orchard in agricultural or horticultural pursuits and that is operated on the roads of this state only incidentally for transportation between the owner’s or operator’s 1 The genesis of the exemption appears to be based, at least in part, on the need for migrant farm laborers to operate farm tractors without a driver’s license. See Fla. AGO 1970-22 (April 3, 1970) (opining on whether licensing exemptions in Chapter 320 apply to nonresident migrant farm workers operating “commercial type trucks used regularly to haul citrus and agricultural products from a grove or farm to a processing plant”). 2 headquarters and the farm, grove, or orchard or between one farm, grove, or orchard and another;[2] or (b) Designed and used primarily as a farm implement for drawing plows, mowing machines, and other implements of husbandry. § 322.01(20), Fla. Stat. (2020) (emphasis added). Chehardy primarily relies on subsection (20)(a) 3 whose highlighted language 2 This language appears to have been drawn from a 1938 Florida Supreme Court case in which the operator of a tractor was jailed because the tractor lacked a proper license tag. The court concluded that if the tractor were configured to haul merchandise, it would be considered a truck and be subject to licensure; but, by the following language, the court excepted the types of limited uses now contained in the “farm tractor” exemption: If it be shown at a trial that each such tractor, or tractor and trailer, was being operated on the highways merely as a means of passage to and from a field, orchard or other place where the tractors, or tractor and trailer, and their loads, if any, were to be used for present current agricultural, horticultural or other crop producing purposes, and the public highways were not being used by such tractors or trailers for distinct motor vehicle or trailer transportation purposes, but the highways were merely used for very short distances in passing to and from the owner’s home or farm or grove or orchard headquarters to such farm, grove or orchard or other place of production, the tractor or trailer and load to be there used by or for the owner in his crop productions, then in such cases the intendments of the statute as now framed may not be thereby violated if such use is not unduly injurious to the roadway or dangerous to the lawful users of the highways. Hart v. Stinson, 185 So. 139, 140 (Fla. 1938) (emphasis added). 3 Chehardy places some reliance on subsection (b), which appears to relate to the type of farm implements that typically are 3 places operational limits on a “farm tractor” to only two types of trips: those between headquarters and a farm, grove, or orchard and those between farms, groves or orchards. Construing the two statutes together, Chehardy’s farm tractor was not a “farm tractor” as defined by statute at the time of his arrest because it was being operated outside the parameters of section 322.01(20)(a), Florida Statutes. Were he driving on a roadway between his home (presumably his headquarters) and his farm or between portions of his farm, he would be exempt; because he was driving from and to his home/headquarters to refuel his farm tractor, however, he was operating a “motor vehicle” 4 subject to restrictions such as requiring a license (there is no allegation that the gas station happened to be an intermediate stop on an otherwise permissible route under the statute). We note how easy it might be to read the exemption statute in isolation and believe that temporarily driving a farm tractor on a Florida roadway is lawful. The statutory definition of “farm tractor” is narrow and makes no accommodation for trips to refuel a farm owner’s fleet, perhaps because gas stations or fuel oil facilities are generally few and far between in rural Florida. The specter of slow-moving and potentially dangerous farm tractors 5 pulled by farm tractors or that operate exclusively on farmlands, but there appears to be little doubt that he was operating a “farm tractor” within the meaning of subsection (a). 4 Though not mentioned in the parties’ legal papers, the financial responsibility statute’s definition of “motor vehicle” excepts “traction engines, road rollers, farm tractors, power shovels, and well drillers” from its scope. § 324.021(1), Fla. Stat. (2020); see Preferred Risk Mut. Ins. Co. v. Jackson, 414 So. 2d 532, 533 (Fla. 1st DCA 1982) (upholding insurance policy exclusion for damage caused by farm machinery because section 324.021(1) “expressly excludes ‘farm tractors’ from the definition of ‘motor vehicles’”). 5 Rippy v. Shepard, 80 So. 3d 305, 309 (Fla. 2012) (“The weight, speed, and mechanism of farm tractors render their negligent use peculiarly dangerous to others. Furthermore, farm 4 on state roads driven by unlicensed farm hands for many miles to gas stations likely explains, at least in part, the statute’s temporary/incidental use limitations. Chehardy’s one-mile trip to refuel his farm tractor, although de minimis in nature, does not dovetail with what the law permits, so dismissal of his civil lawsuit on this basis was proper. AFFIRMED. OSTERHAUS and M.K. THOMAS, JJ., concur. _____________________________ Not final until disposition of any timely and authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or 9.331. _____________________________ Marie A. Mattox and Ashley N. Richardson of Marie A. Mattox, P.A., Tallahassee, for Appellant. William G. Warner and Jennifer A. Hawkins of Warner Law Firm, P.A., Panama City, and Joe Longfellow of Andrews, Crabtree, Knox & Longfellow LLP, Tallahassee, for Appellees. tractors frequently operate along state roads and other public areas, thereby subjecting the public to danger of injury.”). 5