County : Ambulance Firm Wins Action Over Late Bid

An ambulance service that missed a deadline to submit a bid for a county contract by minutes because its employee was stuck in traffic should be allowed to bid anyway, an appeals court said in a decision released Tuesday.

“In the traditional bidding context, timing is crucial since the bids are opened immediately after the deadline and the contract awarded to the lowest bidder,” Justice Edward J. Wallin of the 4th District Court of Appeal wrote, adding:.

“Here, the proposals were not to be evaluated for several weeks after the submission deadline and cost is only one of several factors to be considered in the decision to award the contract.”

Wallin and Justice John K. Trotter Jr. ordered a Superior Court judge to require that the county Board of Supervisors accept and review the proposal of Scudders Ambulance Service, which has headquarters in Irvine. Justice Sheila Prell Sonenshine dissented.

A year ago, the supervisors began competitive bidding for ambulance services. The county Fire Department was chosen to determine the rules and administer the contracts for various areas of the county. The department requested proposals, and the deadline was set for Sept. 30.

Scudders officials said employee Greg Taylor was delivering the firm’s proposal when he was caught in traffic and missed the deadline.

The county had warned that it would return unopened any proposal received after the deadline, and the county counsel’s office refused to take Scudders’ bid. The ambulance firm sued in Superior Court, lost, and appealed to the higher court.

The appeals court said that strict enforcement of the deadline “results in the public being arbitrarily deprived of one more competing proposal for services which are critically important to the community.”

But Sonenshine’s dissent said that seven companies submitted proposals on time and that Scudders had “plenty of time to prepare and submit a bid before the deadline.”

County Fire Chief Larry Holms said that Scudders, which has contracts to serve other parts of the county, was seeking to serve the San Juan Capistrano area with the bid that was rejected.