SEAN STEPHEN CHEHARDY

v.

MIKE HARRISON, AS SHERIFF OF GULF COUNTY, FLORIDA, AND BRIAN SMITH, INDIVIDUALLY

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

headquarters and the farm, grove, or orchard or between one farm, grove, or orchard and another; 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

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).

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 tractors⁵ 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).

OSTERHAUS and M.K. THOMAS, JJ., concur. _____________________________