California Court of Appeal
County of Butte v. California Emergency Med. Serv. Auth., Inc., C060407
In a county's suit against the Emergency Medical Services Authority (Authority), seeking declaratory relief and a writ of mandate, arising from the county's designation of a local EMS agency to administer some of the requirements of the EMS Act, while reserving for another local agency all of the remaining statutory powers and duties not covered by the agreement, trial court's grant of Authority's motion for summary judgment is affirmed where: 1) the plain language of the EMS Act precluded Butte County from creating a bifurcated local agency system; 2) the Authority has the statutory authority to review a local EMS agency's creation of an exclusive operating area (EOA) as part of the transportation portion of the local EMS plan, regardless of whether the EOA was created through a competitive process or grandfathering, and then to reject the local EMS plan if it is not "concordant and consistent with applicable guidelines or regulations, or both the guidelines and regulations, established by the Authority"; 3) the Authority's interpretation of the "manner and scope" language of section 1797.224 is a generally applicable policy subject to the rulemaking procedures of the APA, and because the Authority did not comply with those procedures, this interpretative regulation is void and not entitled to any deference; and 4) the fact that the Authority relied on an invalid regulation in rejecting the EOAs does not require reversal as the Authority did not abuse its discretion by rejecting the designation of EOAs based on lack of information provided by Nor-Cal EMS.
Appellate Information
- Submitted 08/27/2010
- Decided 08/27/2010
- Published 08/27/2010
Judges
- SCOTLAND
Court
- California Court of Appeal
Counsel
- For Appellant:
- Bruce Alpert, Edmund G. Brown, Jr.