🏡 Property Dispute: Gene and Adrienne Gartman say gunfire, noise, and stray bullets from a neighboring shooting range forced them to leave their retirement property in Holt.
⚖️ Legal Challenge: After losing in circuit court, the couple’s attorney, Mike Chesser, argued that Florida’s law shielding gun ranges is unconstitutional.
📜 Next Steps: The First Circuit Court of Appeal sided with the Gartmans, and the case could advance to the Florida Supreme Court, with potential further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Niceville Local Gene Gartman built houses in the Okaloosa County area for decades before retiring.
As you drive west from Crestview into Santa Rosa County on Highway 90, you get a great look at the vast sprawling estate that reminds you of a British Baron’s country estate.
Gartman and his wife, Adrienne, built their ‘forever home’ on an 80-acre piece of property in the Holt area. The beautiful expanse hosted horses, a swimming pool, and a private tennis court – off State Route 90.
For almost twenty years, the Gartmans hosted family gatherings and lived a relaxed retirement lifestyle.
They say their dream ended when a new neighbor bought up about 200 acres around them and set up a shooting range.
The noise began soon after. They claim to have found debris after that. Their pool, they claim in the lawsuit, had to be cleaned more frequently due to chemical residue from the bullets fired next door.
Soon, they had to move the horses. The Gartmans said the constant firing meant the animals’ quality of life became nonexistent.
After that, family members stopped coming to the home for fear of a stray bullet and the strain of the constant shooting noise.
They claim they found bullets all around their property that had been fired in the air and landed on their land.
But it didn’t matter who shot what onto their land – thanks to a Florida law passed with the lobbying aid of the National Rifle Association in 1999.
The law banned suits from being brought to court by neighbors against gun ranges for being too noisy.
Chapter 823 of Florida State Statutes says, “A person who acquires title or owns real property adversely affected by the use of property with a permanently located and improved sport shooting range shall not maintain a nuisance action against the person who owns the range to restrain, enjoin, or impede the use of the range where there has not been a substantial change in the nature of the use of the range. This section does not prohibit actions for negligence or recklessness in the operation of a sport shooting range or by a person using the range.”
Faced with the prospect of hearing gunfire until they moved or died, the Gartmans hired local attorney Mike Chesser to argue their case on their behalf.
They promptly lost at the first court level – after all the law on the books wasn’t on their side.
So Chesser and the Gartmans went to the First Circuit Court of Appeal – and changed their tactic. They were going to show how the law itself was unconstitutional based on the Florida Constitution.
“The local circuit judge said, ‘Mike Chesser and Gene Gartman, get out of my courtroom. Can you not read?’ And I said, ‘Of course I can read, but I see that in my judgment, this statute is it, when you think about it, it conflicts with another constitutional provision in Florida that says I have a right to protect my property in a courtroom, Judge, I have the right. To be here.’”
The First Circuit Court of Appeal agreed. Gartman and his attorney had the right to be heard in court – and he had the right to use his property without interference. That interference portion of the law, the appeals court argued, came from the gun range to the Gartmans in the form of water, soil, and noise pollution – as well as the risk of wayward bullets coming onto the property.
In their Judgment, the Gartmans were denied their right to use the courts to solve their issues with the Element shooting range complex. The court also ruled that they did not have a reasonable alternative to the courts in their situation, and that the legislature’s directive in the law to avoid “impair[ing] or diminish[ing] the private property rights of adjoining neighbors” to the use of their own land.
This case is most likely not over and may have two more stops before the case is all said and done.
According to the family’s attorney, Mike Chesser, the next stop for the case is the Florida Supreme Court, where the case will be heard by the court. Afterwards, they may issue a ruling that could be challenged either by the Gartman family or by the shooting range at the United States Supreme Court – should the highest court in the land choose to take the case.
“The whole process of governing, the process of having a court system is to have a judge who has the jurisdiction to say to those two people, ‘you are colliding your rights, one of you taking unfair advantage of the other,’ and the court has a an historical duty to say, ‘that’s not the way it should be,’” Chesser said, “One of you is, is, is, is intruding under the rights of the other. And that’s where we are with this gun range. And that’s where we are, incidentally, with what the legislature did here, when they enter into the courts province and say to the court, you no longer have the right to consider that.”
We’ve reached out to the Attorney for the Element Complex and to the National Rifle Association for comment. As of the publishing of this article, we have not been able to reach them. Should they give us a comment, we will update this story to reflect their views.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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