Opinion ID: 595568
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Regularly Dispatched Requirement

Text: 10 To satisfy the second prong of the substantially related test, the County must show that the EMTs are regularly dispatched to fires, crime scenes, riots, natural disasters and accidents. 13 The Department of Labor has said: 11 The second test to determine if activities are 'substantially related' to fire protection or law enforcement is that EMTs must be 'regularly dispatched' to such things as fires or accidents.... There is no specific frequency of occurrence which establishes 'regularity'; it must be determined on the basis of the facts of each case. 14 12 Although we agree with the Department of Labor that a case by case analysis is appropriate, we establish here some guidelines for the analysis. 13 We first consider which dispatches are to fires, crime scenes, riots, natural disasters and accidents. In concluding that the EMTs are regularly dispatched to these types of rescues, the district court considered only those dispatches that fell in the categories of fires, crimes, and automobile accidents. 15 The district court was correct in its selection of these categories, and only these categories, of dispatches. 16 Although the test as set out in the regulation refers generally to accidents, not just to automobile accidents, the regulation may not reasonably be construed to mean all accidents. The purpose of the regulation's two-part test is to determine if the services the EMTs provide are substantially related to firefighting or law enforcement activities. The information submitted to the district court by the parties indicates that many of the accidents to which the EMTs respond are not related to either of these activities; for example, many of the accidents involve household falls. 17 The only category of accidents in the information submitted by the parties that can be said to be substantially related to either firefighting or law enforcement activities is automobiles accidents. Accordingly, the district court properly considered only dispatches to fires, crimes, and automobile accidents in determining whether the EMTs are regularly dispatched to fires, crime scenes, riots, natural disasters and accidents. 18 14 We next consider whether the dispatches to fires, crimes, and automobile accidents are regular. In concluding that these dispatches are regular, the district court considered only the number of such dispatches per week, month, or year. This is insufficient. The district court should have considered the following factors: (1) the percentage of the Service's total calls that are dispatches to fires, crimes, and automobile accidents; 19 (2) the percentage of total EMT man-hours spent responding to dispatches to fires, crimes, and automobile accidents; and (3) the percentage of the total number of all fires, automobile accident, and police calls that occur throughout the county to which the Service is dispatched. 20 The parties provided the district court with a plethora of numbers and statistics; the plaintiffs provided information relevant to factor one, and the County provided information relevant to factor two. None of the information provided by the parties, however, is helpful as to factor three. To determine whether the Service is regularly dispatched to fires, it is imperative that the district court know whether the Service is dispatched to every fire, every other fire, or one in every 100 fires to which the fire department is called. 21 Likewise, to determine whether the Service is regularly dispatched to crime scenes and automobile accidents, the district court must know under what circumstances and how often the Service is dispatched to respond to police calls. We do not speculate as to what percentage under each of these three factors will satisfy the regularly dispatched requirement in this case. We leave this to the district court's determination following further factual development.