A Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge has sided with American Medical Response in its lawsuit against the county over ambulance services, and her ruling grants the company’s request for a preliminary injunction.
The ruling, issued Thursday afternoon and made final on Friday, stays the county’s new ordinance and permit approvals.
It also extends AMR’s current contract until at least July, or until the court case gets resolved, according to the document filed Thursday afternoon.
“The court has made the difficult decision that it is necessary and appropriate to issue a preliminary injunction in this action,” Judge Donna Geck wrote.
She said an injunction “would not be contrary to the public interest, particularly given that the public interest is furthered by the fact that AMR has a proven record of providing emergency medical services in Santa Barbara County, and scored significantly higher in the independently evaluated RFP process than did County Fire.”
“At this time AMR remains the contracted ambulance provider for the County of Santa Barbara, and the community can feel confident that the legal challenge does not impact the delivery of 9-1-1 emergency medical services the community receives,” county spokeswoman Kelsey Gerckens Buttitta said on Friday.
AMR representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
AMR and the Santa Barbara County Fire Department submitted bids to the county for an exclusive ambulance services contract last year, and when the county switched this year to a non-exclusive permit system, both applied for permits.
Public Health’s Emergency Medical Services Agency said both applicants were qualified.
The Board of Supervisors voted in September to grant County Fire three permits for ambulance services countywide and deny AMR’s permit, and AMR West sued.
Geck said in her ruling that “time is of the essence in this case,” and she plans to expedite the case and trial for the first two causes of action — which allege the county violated the state EMS Act through its new ordinance and permitting system for ambulance services.
The third cause of action, related to Proposition 26 government charges, will be addressed later, she said.
Geck canceled a case management and hearing on the preliminary injunction scheduled for Friday afternoon, and set another case management date on Jan. 5.
Geck said she will issue an injunction staying the effectiveness and enforcement of county Ordinance 5182 (adopted this year to create the ambulance services permitting system and selection process).
She also will extend the expiration date of AMR’s contract from Feb. 29 to at least July, when she’s scheduling trial for the case.
AMR has to meet all of the terms and conditions of its contract and make contractually required payments, the court ruled.
The company’s contract would end Feb. 29, and the County Fire contract would start March 1, without court action.
“While the injunction is in force, none of the county defendants shall act in any manner so as to interfere with AMR’s continued provision of EMS pursuant to the terms of its most current contract,” Geck wrote.
“Nothing in this injunction precludes County Fire from continuing with its preparations to provide EMS to the county, should it choose to do so.”
County Fire is spending millions of dollars on its startup plan to hire staff, equip vehicles and lease space for ambulance crew quarters. It’s unclear what impact the ruling has on the transition implementation plan the Board of Supervisors approved last month.
County Fire “will continue on with its preparations to provide emergency medical services to the county,” Buttitta told Noozhawk.
Ruling Analysis
In her written analysis, Geck agrees with AMR’s allegation that the county created a de-facto exclusive operating area by granting permits to one agency when two qualified agencies applied (County Fire and AMR).
“AMR’s claims and supporting evidence that county canceled the RFP process and its subsequent permitting decisions resulted from county’s desire to install County Fire as an exclusive operator, in order to generate revenue, at least raise the question of whether County Fire’s connection to the board resulted in a self-interested application, and if the resulting de facto exclusive operating area is in the best interests of patients.
“Side-stepping state-level review forecloses any independent assessment,” she wrote in the tentative ruling.
The Board of Supervisors denied AMR’s permit application, saying it didn’t adequately address how the company would staff remote areas such as the Cuyama Valley and “demonstrates relatively few community benefits.”
Geck questioned the county’s criteria for community benefit.
As mentioned in public meetings and court documents, AMR did not include all of the programs and investments in its one-year permit application that it did in its seven-year contract bid.
“County failed to acknowledge or explain how holding any applicant to a stringent standard for these amorphous criteria could be justified, in the context of only a one-year contract,” Geck wrote.
“Particularly for a private EMS provider — as opposed to a county-affiliated, public-funded EMS provider with a substantial non-EMS presence within the county — a one-year contract would place serious limitations on the ability to meet (or exceed, apparently) such criteria, calling into question the overall viability and/or validity of such a criterion.”
Attorney General Rob Banta’s office weighed in on the case last week on behalf of the California Emergency Medical Services Authority.
The attorney general’s brief said, “To the extent AMR proves the underlying factual basis for its claims, the county’s actions appear to side-step the oversight mandated by the EMS Act and, thus, necessarily weaken the law’s protections that ensure the quality and equitable access of EMS care.”
