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State v. Porter5/4/2001
e point to note that the applicable statute permitted the hearing officer to base his review of the license suspension on the attendant written documents. From these the hearing officer easily inferred that Deputy Cox had observed Porter speeding and crossing the fog line twice while operating his vehicle and that he had passed this information to Deputy Watson, who included it in his reports. If the circuit court had observed the correct scope of review, it could not have found the hearing officer's order deficient in this regard. By basing its decision on matters outside the permissible scope of review, the court applied incorrect law. Skaggs-Albertson's v. ABC Liquors, Inc., 363 So. 2d 1082 (Fla. 1978); Dep't of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles v. Favino, 667 So. 2d 305 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995); Haskins, 752 So. 2d at 626.
Beyond that, the statute providing for administrative reviews of license suspensions does not even require hearing officers to include findings of fact in their orders. Indeed, the statute declares that Florida's Administrative Procedures Act, which imposes such requirements on administrative orders generally, does not govern proceedings of this type. § 322.2615(12), Fla. Stat. (1997). Thus, when reversing the hearing officer's order based on the supposedly inadequate wording of a particular finding, the circuit court assumed incorrectly that the law required the finding at all.
Finally, the circuit court misstated the fellow officer rule when holding that it could only be applied if Deputy Cox had ticketed Porter for speeding or crossing the fog line, had developed his own founded suspicion that Porter was intoxicated, or had needed assistance in arresting Porter. We have already pointed out that the fellow officer rule was properly invoked simply because Deputy Cox had information, i.e., that Porter had been driving his vehicle, which Deputy Watson put together with his own observations of Porter's inebriated state. This gave Deputy Watson probable cause to believe that Porter had operated his vehicle while intoxicated and, thus, to arrest him for that offense.
We have seen that the circuit court applied incorrect law when quashing the hearing officer's order. Therefore, we grant the Department's petition for writ of certiorari and quash the circuit court's order.
PARKER, A.C.J., and SILBERMAN, J., Concur.
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