East Hampton Ambulance Conflict: New Attempt To Prevent Former Volunteers From Mounting Legal Defense

The attorneys for the chiefs of East Hampton Village’s ambulance corps and the Department of EMS have asked a judge to disqualify the attorney representing a faction of volunteers opposing an effort by the ambulance leadership to dissolve the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, the volunteers group that had run the ambulance for 20 years prior to the Village Board seizing control last year, and transfer more than $300,000 in funds it controls to a new organization set up by the chiefs.

The attorney opposing the dissolution, Joel Ziegler, was retained under false pretenses by “rogue” former members of the ambulance association “acting vexatiously,” the attorneys representing Department of EMS Chief Mary Mott and Assistant Chief Mary Ellen McGuire argued to a state judge in court filings last week.

The chiefs’ attorneys claim that Teresa Bertha, a former village ambulance volunteer, has improperly represented herself as the president of the association, raised money and hired Ziegler despite having no standing to represent the association officially.

Bertha has said she was elected the association’s president in May 2023 at a meeting of the majority of the association’s members — though largely one that had walked-out on the ambulance service in the wake of the village takeover.

“After declaring herself president of [the association] at the unsanctioned meeting, Ms. Bertha and the rogue members began fundraising on behalf of the [association] without authorization or consent,” attorney Zachary Longstreth wrote in a May 3 filing. “Ms. Bertha and the rogue members have now retained Mr. Ziegler to represent the [association] in this special proceeding without authorization or consent of the corporation, its actual officers or its board of directors.

“To be clear, Mr. Ziegler does not represent the [association] and Ms. Bertha has no authority to hire anyone on behalf of the corporation,” he added. “By accepting employment on behalf of a person that wishes to present a defense that is not warranted under existing law, Mr. Ziegler must be disqualified as counsel for the corporation.”

Ziegler, in his own defense, harked to the assessment of the fracturing of the association over the past year presented by the chiefs’ attorneys that acknowledged that the association now has two “factions of members” and said that the May 2023 meeting was called by active members of the association, that minutes were kept and voted to appoint new volunteers to head the group since Mott and McGuire, they claimed, were now paid employees of the village’s new Department of EMS.

“The officers refused to accept their removal and continued to act as if they remained officers of the EHVAA,” Ziegler said in his response. “Without notice to the membership of the original EHVAA, they created a new set of by-laws, giving power to the village to supervise the corporation and to change the corporation’s mission statement and procedures. They usurped the [association] bank account and they apparently consented to the transfer of the EHVAA’s ambulance service certificate from the corporation to the Village of East Hampton without requiring reimbursement of the $10,000 filing fee …”

In the wake of the shakeup, the ambulance lost some two dozens members who quit or were kicked out of the volunteer ranks by the village administration. The village has increased hiring of paid EMTs and mounted a recruitment campaign to attract more volunteer drivers and EMTs but it has removed the traditional name harking to the volunteer ranks, East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance, from its ambulances in favor of the Department of Emergency Medical Services banner.

Ziegler said he suspects that the village government is paying the legal bills for the chiefs in an effort to stop their attempts to stop the village from taking control of the association bank accounts.

Longstreth technically represents only the two ambulance chiefs and their claimed positions as the heads of the association. But he works for Pinsky Law Group, the Syracuse firm that helped the Village Board surreptitiously seize the certifications for the village ambulance operations, which had previously been held by the association.

The chiefs have ostensibly created a new nonprofit corporation to represent the ambulance volunteers and have asked the court to dissolve the association and allow its assets to be transferred to the new group.