Ambulance Monopoly Trial Postponed in Santa Barbara Superior Court

Settlement Talks Start Between AMR and County over 10-Year Contract Awarded to Fire Department

Credit: Nick Welsh

The knock-down, drag-out courtroom slug fest scheduled to take place this July between American Medical Response (AMR) and the Santa Barbara County supervisors over their decision to award the county’s lucrative 10-year ambulance contract to the County Fire Department has been postponed until November. This delay is to allow settlement talks to proceed and to allow both sides to pursue discovery in preparation for trial should those talks prove fruitless.

In a case with national ramifications, AMR — the private emergency medical services company that for decades has provided near-exclusive ambulance services countywide — sued the county, charging the supervisors had violated their own detailed bidding processes multiple times to award the contract — estimated to be worth nearly $1 billion — to the firefighters.

In addition, the company alleged the supervisors violated a state law designed to safeguard against the undue monopolization of emergency medical services. The irony here is that the supervisors have insisted their action was designed to break the monopolistic chokehold they contend AMR has held for the past 41 years.

Filing a brief in support of AMR was California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who expressed concern that the supervisors were promulgating a new monopoly of their own. And in a key procedural skirmish earlier this year, Judge Donna Geck issued a withering 33-page ruling in favor of AMR’s position and set the trial on the merits of the case for July.

Both sides have launched discovery blitzkriegs against the other, demanding depositions and documents from the other side in hopes of bolstering their positions. According to legal filings, both sides have responded to such requests in good faith, but the volume sought and the time required to satisfy such requests necessitated an extension of the trial date.

Aside from the dollar amounts — on paper, the contract is worth $83 million in service billings and $20 million in actual payments — the stakes could not be higher. Across the country, local fire agencies have been pushing to take over emergency response contracts traditionally held by private monopolies. That the county supervisors did just that has made Santa Barbara the tip of what appears to be a long spear.

Local firefighters have argued they can provide better, faster, cheaper service because no profits are extracted to bolster the bottom line of some out-of-state private corporation. A majority of the supervisors agreed, even if that meant ignoring the recommendation of the county’s Local Emergency Medical Services Authority and the panel created by that board to evaluate competing bid proposals. AMR’s initial bid outperformed the firefighters’ by 300 points.

The firefighters have contended that the reviewing agency has been populated by individuals who worked for AMR prior to the bidding war, after the initial bid results were made public, or in one case, both.

Should settlement talks founder and the case eventually go to trial, it’s likely to prove long, technically tedious, and exceptionally bruising. In the meantime, AMR will continue to provide exclusive ambulance services in Santa Barbara County, the 35 ambulances purchased by the county fire department will collect more dust, and the hiring process initiated by fire brass to staff the new service will remain on ice. Should the county back down or lose, those new ambulances will be sold.