W.R. DANIEL, JR., AS PROPERTY APPRAISER, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, APPELLANT,
v.
DAVID STONE, APPELLEE
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The Property Appraiser of Hillsborough County appealed a trial court order reclassifying 15.26 wooded acres and a one-acre homesite as agricultural property. The appellate court reversed, holding that the property owner failed to establish bona fide commercial agricultural use as required by Florida law, and that the trial court erred in basing its decision on the agricultural classification of other unrelated portions of the property.
The property did not qualify for agricultural classification. The trial court erred in reclassifying the property based on the agricultural status of other unrelated portions. Tax assessors are constitutional officers clothed with a presumption of correctness, and the property owner failed to exclude every reasonable hypothesis supporting the assessor's determination that the land was not being used for agricultural purposes.
[1] Lands are classified as agricultural only if used primarily for bona fide commercial agricultural purposes.
[2] The presumption of correctness attaches to the actions of tax assessors, requiring proof to overcome their findings.
Previewing 2 of 5 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“only lands which are used primarily for bona fide agricultural purposes shall be classified agricultural. 'Bona fide agricultural purposes' means good faith commercial agricultural use of the land.”
Establishes the statutory standard for agricultural classification that must be met
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceThe Property Appraiser's representatives visited the property and found approximately fifty chickens (including game fowl/fighting cocks), some in pen…
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LEHAN, Judge.
The Property Appraiser of Hillsborough County appeals from an order of the trial court directing that 15.26 wooded acres and a one acre homesite be reclassified as agricultural. Section 193.461(3)(b), Florida Statutes (1983), provides that “only lands which are used primarily for bona fide agricultural purposes shall be classified agricultural. ‘Bona fide agricultural purposes’ means good faith commercial agricultural use of the land.”
Two representatives of the Property Appraiser who visited the property testified that there was no evidence of any agricultural activity. They did testify as to there being about fifty chickens, some of which were game fowl, or fighting cocks, apparently partly in pens and partly roaming loose and roosting in the trees on the 15.26 acre tract. The appraiser’s testimony was that fifty is too small a number of chickens for a commercial chicken enterprise. There was no evidence of any sales of chickens.
There was testimony on behalf of the property owner as to an existing or planned activity on the 15.26 acres involving the growing of a type of potato known as a yamma. However, the trial court’s characterization of this testimony was hardly consistent with directing the reclassification of the property as agricultural. The court noted that there were “no normal agricultural pursuits being conducted in the woods” and said, “I will be brutally frank, the entire agricultural endeavors were mickey mouse to say the least.... The talk of yammas and liberated chickens all sounds off the wall....”
As to the one acre homesite, there was no evidence to associate the tenant in the home, who was the owner of the chickens referred to above, with any agricultural activity.
It appears that the trial court’s disposition of this case was based upon a conclusion that since another portion of the property which is not involved in this case had been classified as agricultural, the portions involved here must be so classified. We disagree. See Daniel v. American Cyanamid, Co., 480 So. 2d 678 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985).
Our basic reasoning for this reversal is the same as that used by the Florida Supreme Court in Straughn v. Tuck, 354 So. 2d 368, 371 (Fla.1977), to wit:
Tax assessors are constitutional officers and as such their actions are clothed with the presumption of correctness. One asserting error on the part of the tax assessor must show by “proof” that every reasonable hypothesis has been excluded which would support the tax assessor.... There is ample evidence upon which the tax assessor could have found that the land was not being used for an agricultural purpose.
Reversed and remanded for proceedings consistent herewith.
GRIMES, A.C.J., and SCHEB, J„ concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Markham v. Rose, 495 So. 2d 865 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986)…ification where their land was “in its natural, unimproved state. There is ample evidence upon which the tax assessor could have found that the land was not being used for an agricultural purpose.” Id. at 371. In the recent case of Daniel v. Stone, 481 So. 2d 1251, (Fla. 2d DCA 1986), the second district, based upon the burden of proof set forth in Straughn, reversed the trial court’s agricultural classification of fifteen wooded acres and a one-acre home-site where the only evidence of agricultural pursuits…
Authorities Cited
- Straughn v. Harlan Tuck and Florence P. Tuck, 354 So. 2d 368 (Fla. 1977)
- W.R. Daniel, Jr. v. Am. Cyanamid Co., 480 So. 2d 678 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985)