Sullins v. AMERICAN MED. RESPONSE OF OKL.
Decision Date | 20 February 2001 |
Docket Number | No. 95,047.,95,047. |
Citation | 23 P.3d 259,2001 OK 20 |
Parties | Lloyd SULLINS, Plaintiff, v. AMERICAN MEDICAL RESPONSE OF OKLAHOMA, INC., a Delaware corporation, and Warren Properties, Inc., a Delaware corporation, Defendants. |
Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Don Manners, Kirby Evans, Oklahoma City, OK, attorneys for Lloyd Sullins, plaintiff.
David A. Walls, Alan W. Bardell, Oklahoma City, OK, attorneys for American Medical Response of Oklahoma, Inc., defendant.
Rex K. Travis, Gary L. Brooks, Oklahoma City, OK, attorneys for Oklahoma Trial Lawyers Association, amicus curiae.
Mark W. Schilling, Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney for Emergency Medical Services Authority, amicus curiae. BOUDREAU, Justice:
¶ 1 In August of 1998, Lloyd Sullins dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool at an apartment complex in Oklahoma City. He injured his spinal cord and nearly drowned. EMSA, the 911 emergency medical service in Oklahoma City, was called to the scene. According to Sullins, the ambulance personnel dropped Sullins on his head, exacerbating his injury.
¶ 2 On October 21, 1999, more than a year after the accident, Sullins filed a negligence action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma against American Medical Response of Oklahoma, Inc. (AMR) and Warren Properties, Inc.1 AMR raised a statute of limitations defense, alleging that the tort claim is barred because Sullins failed to give notice of the claim within one year of the date of the injury as required by the Governmental Tort Claims Act (GTCA).2 In support of its defense, AMR contended that as the designated operations contractor for EMSA, a public trust and a political subdivision under the GTCA, it qualified as an agency of a political subdivision protected by governmental immunity under the GTCA.
¶ 3 The United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma certified the governmental-immunity question to this Court, pursuant to the Revised Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act.3 The federal district court framed the legal question as follows:4
1. Whether a private entity, such as AMR, may be cloaked with immunity under the Oklahoma Governmental Tort Claims Act when acting as an "agency" of a public trust, such as EMSA?
¶ 4 In the certification order, the federal district court set forth the facts relevant to the legal question. EMSA is a public trust created to provide emergency medical services in Oklahoma. Its trust indenture requires that EMSA select an operations contractor to operate the dispatching and field operations of the emergency medical services. EMSA, a public trust, and AMR, a private entity, entered into a contract under which AMR became the operations contractor. AMR was the operations contractor at the time of Sullins' injury.
¶ 5 Although the certified question relates to AMR's immunity from tort liability when "acting as an `agency' of a public trust, such as EMSA," the certified facts do not include a determination or stipulation that AMR was acting as an "agency" of a public trust. Rather, the certified facts provide that EMSA selected AMR as its operations contractor. AMR's claim that it is immunized from tort liability, as a matter of law, rests squarely on its contract with EMSA, a public trust, under which EMSA selected it as operations contractor to operate the dispatching and field operations of the emergency medical services. Accordingly, we reformulate the question within the bounds of the certified facts as follows:5
For purposes of the Governmental Tort Claims Act, is a private entity an "agency" of a public trust merely because the private entity contracts with the public trust to provide the services which the public trust is authorized to provide?
¶ 6 We answer the reformulated question in the negative.
THE EMS SYSTEM
¶ 7 The municipalities of Tulsa and Oklahoma City jointly established an emergency medical services system (EMS system) through an Inter-local Agreement.6 Pursuant to the agreement, both municipalities accepted beneficiary status of the Emergency Medical Services Authority,7 a public trust created for the purpose of providing the emergency medical services, and they also adopted a uniform code for emergency medical services (EMS code).8 The agreement and the EMS code delineated three areas of responsibility for the EMS system.
¶ 8 First, the municipalities were required to create an administrative agency with regulatory powers to oversee the clinical aspects of the EMS system. Accordingly, the municipalities created the Emergency Physicians Foundation (EPF). The EPF membership consists of board-certified emergency medicine physicians in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas. The EPF also has a nine-member board of directors, the Medical Control Board, consisting of board-certified emergency medicine physicians engaged full-time in the practice of emergency medicine. The Medical Control Board sets the standard of care for emergency medical services in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and other regulated areas. To assure compliance with its standard of care, the Board hires a Medical Director.
¶ 9 Second, the agreement and the EMS code provide that EMSA is responsible for the overall financial affairs of the EMS system. EMSA controls the rate structure, subsidy, and all billing and collections. EMSA is also responsible for acquiring, as owner, all EMS vehicles, equipment and other property necessary to provide dispatching and ambulance services in the regulated areas.9
¶ 10 Third, to comply with its general charge to provide ambulance services to the citizens in the regulated areas, the agreement and the EMS code obligate EMSA to select an operations contractor to operate the EMS control centers and to provide dispatching and in-field services under EMSA's name and EMS license.10 EMSA must select the operations contractor through competitive bid.11 The operations contractor supplies the personnel necessary to operate the ambulance service throughout the regulated areas at the price fixed by the competitive bid.12
THE GOVERNMENTAL TORT CLAIMS ACT
¶ 11 AMR's immunity from liability turns on our construction of the GTCA. In enacting the GTCA in 1984,13 the Oklahoma Legislature expressly adopted the doctrine of sovereign immunity, freeing the 14 from liability for torts. However, following the modern trend,15 the Legislature also waived sovereign immunity by extending "governmental accountability to all torts for which a private person or entity would be liable subject only to the act's specific `limitations and exceptions.'"16 In waiving sovereign immunity, the Legislature restricted the waiver "only to the extent and in the manner prescribed in the act".17
¶ 12 The GTCA prescribes the manner in which any person asserting a claim against the state or a political subdivision must proceed. Among other things, a claimant must present written notice of a claim within one year of the date the loss occurs.18 If a person asserting a claim against the state or a political subdivision fails to present timely notice, the claim is forever barred.19
¶ 13 AMR describes itself as a private corporation that has contracted with EMSA, a public trust, to operate the dispatching and field operations of the emergency medical services. AMR contends that by virtue of the contract it has become the "designated operations contractor" for EMSA and thus an "agency" of EMSA, a political subdivision under the GTCA. AMR takes the position that as an "agency" of EMSA, it must be sued in conformity with the requirements of the GTCA and therefore it is entitled to notice of the claim within one year of the date the loss occurs under § 156 of the GTCA.20
¶ 14 Sullins, on the other hand, responds that the Oklahoma Legislature did not extend the status of an "agency," with its concomitant immunity, to a private entity solely on the basis that the entity provides services to or for a public trust. Sullins argues that AMR is an independent contractor under common law theories of agency. Accordingly, Sullins maintains that AMR is a non-governmental entity and not entitled to notice under the GTCA.
¶ 15 In considering AMR's contention that it is an "agency" of EMSA, our analysis must begin with the definitional portion of the GTCA, § 152(8) which defines a political subdivision. That subsection defines a political subdivision to include, among other entities, "a public trust where the sole beneficiary or beneficiaries are a city, town, school district or county."21 The definition of a political subdivision also embraces all its "institutions, instrumentalities or agencies."22
¶ 16 Since the definition of a political subdivision includes its "agencies," we must turn to another subsection of the definitional portion of the GTCA. Subsection 152(2), defines agency as follows:
If AMR is an entity designated to act in behalf of EMSA, a public trust, then it is an "agency" of EMSA, a political subdivision under the GTCA.
¶ 17 In resolving this question, we must construe the meaning of the statutory language "entity designated to act in behalf of the state or a political subdivision." The rules of statutory construction are well established. First and foremost, we must give effect to the Legislature's intent.23 If the language is clear and unambiguous, the plain...
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