County of San Bernardino v. City of San Bernardino

In this case, we address the respective roles of counties, their local emergency medical services (hereafter sometimes EMS) agencies, cities, and fire districts under the Emergency Medical Services System and the Prehospital Emergency Medical Care Personnel Act (the EMS Act). (Health & Saf. Code, § 1797 et seq.; all further statutory references are to this code unless otherwise indicated.) The Court of Appeal concluded: (1) that cities and fire districts that contracted for or provided prehospital emergency medical services as of June 1, 1980, can retain administration of such services indefinitely and need not fully integrate their operations into the systems of their county-designated local EMS agencies; (2) that the local EMS agency in this case had exceeded its authority by subjecting the City of *914 San Bernardino (City) to certain protocols governing the dispatch of EMS providers and their coordination at the emergency scene; and (3) that the City had the prerogative of expanding into types of emergency medical services that it did not provide as of June 1, 1980, such as ambulance services, and of excluding from its borders the ambulance company that previously had…

I respectfully dissent from the judgment insofar as it reverses the judgment of the Court of Appeal. I concur in the judgment insofar as it affirms that part of the judgment of the Court of Appeal holding that the City of San Bernardino (the City) retains the right to administer prehospital emergency medical services (EMS). I do not agree that the Legislature intended to give the local EMS agency authority over dispatch of ambulances within the City or that the Legislature intended to distinguish among the forms of prehospital emergency services over which a city retains administrative control and thereby to preclude the city from adding ambulance services to the services it was providing to its residents on June 1, 1980.

*935 In my view the opinion of Justice Hollenhorst for the Court of Appeal, the relevant portions of which are set forth below with additions in brackets and deletions reflected as [], correctly analyzes, and is faithful to the legislative intent underlying the EMS Act (Health & Saf. Code, § 1797 et seq.) and specifically Health and Safety Code section 1797.201 (unless otherwise indicated all references herein are to that code). As the Court of Appeal…

I. Introduction

The majority adopts a schizophrenic construction of the Emergency Medical Services System and the Prehospital Emergency Medical Care Personnel *941 Act (the EMS Act). (See Health & Saf. Code, § 1797 et seq.; all further . statutory references are to this code unless otherwise indicated.) On the one hand, the majority correctly and repeatedly stresses “the Legislature’s desire to achieve coordination and integration is evident throughout the [EMS] [A]ct” and the “manifest legislative expectation [is] that cities and counties will eventually come to an agreement with regard to the provision of emergency medical services.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 922, 930; see also id. at pp. 915, 924-925, 928-929.) On the other hand, the majority upholds as “essentially correct” the Court of Appeal’s conclusion “that cities and fire districts that contracted for or provided prehospital emergency medical services as of June 1, 1980, can retain administration of such services indefinitely and need not fully integrate their operations into the systems of their county-designated local EMS agencies.” (Id. at p. 913; see also id. at pp. 922, 924, 930.) In my view, nothing in the EMS Act…