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HILLSBOROUGH -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Orange County Rescue Squad against Orange County after the director of Orange County Emergency Services ordered the squad to stand down.
The Rescue Squad, which was located in Hillsborough and was a separate organization from Orange County EMS, filed the lawsuit against Orange County and its director of emergency services, Col. F. Rojas Montes de Oca Jr.
The squad had a franchise contract with Orange County to provide transportation and extraction services in emergencies.
Montes de Oca issued the stand-down order on June 27, 2008, because of complaints from other emergency responders who said the squad members were unprofessional, lacked the knowledge to properly perform their duties, went to emergency scenes without being dispatched to them and played around with equipment at the squad's headquarters on South Churton Street.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claimed to be a class-action lawsuit for all the citizens of Orange County and those who transit through Orange County, but U.S. District Judge William J. Osteen Jr. wrote in his opinion that the rescue squad lacked standing to bring a class action lawsuit.
The rescue squad used Gary J. Clark, a paramedic, as the representative of the class, but Osteen said the squad did not show that Clark suffered any injury.
"While Mr. Clark and OCRS's members may be offended by lengthy emergency response times that could potentially exacerbate victims' injuries, there is no indication that Mr. Clark or any OCRS member has ever personally been a victim under such circumstances," Osteen wrote.
The rescue squad attempted to add Frances D. Brown to the lawsuit as a plaintiff and a representative of the class, but Osteen denied that and said that even if he had allowed her to be added, it wouldn't have made any difference in his decision.
Brown fell at a restaurant and broke her femur. The rescue squad claims its station was one-quarter mile away, and it could have quickly responded to the fall. Instead, because of the stand-down order, it took the county about 30 minutes for a first-responder to arrive and another 15 minutes after that for an ambulance to arrive to transport her to the hospital.
Osteen wrote that there is no indication the alleged delay exacerbated her leg injury, and that the rescue squad did not establish that someone from the rescue squad would have responded more quickly than the county to help the woman.
The lawsuit, filed by attorney Jeremy Browner for the rescue squad, also claimed that Orange County and Montes de Oca had violated the 14th Amendment federal due process law by depriving the rescue squad of property interests without a hearing.
The property interest, according to the squad, was its franchise agreement with Orange County, the use of the county's 911 dispatch system and being dispatched to calls.
"This bare assertion is the sort of 'legal conclusion' that is not 'entitled to the assumption of truth,'" Osteen wrote.
A breach of contract is not deprivation of property without constitutional due process of law otherwise every breach of contract by a government would be a constitutional case, Osteen said.
The Orange County Rescue Squad failed to state a valid due process claim because it has not demonstrated deprivation without due process of law, Osteen ruled.
Other issues concerned state law and should be decided in state court, Osteen said.
Osteen permanently dismissed the federal portions of the lawsuit and dismissed the state-law portions from federal court but left it open for the rescue squad to decide whether it wanted to try the issues in state court.
"The client has decided not to move forward with anything," Browner said Tuesday.
The rescue squad won't appeal the case in federal court and doesn't plan to bring any action in state court, he said.
The squad sold its building to an auto parts store, but it still owes the bank money, he said.
The lender repossessed one of the ambulances, and the squad sold another one, and there is still other equipment to be sold, Browner said.
"The plan is to dissolve the nonprofit," he said.
