Mom Sues Nashville Over Ambulance Response to Crash

NASHVILLE, Tenn. --

A Channel 4 I-Team investigation that exposed people having to wait 15 minutes or longer for ambulances in Davidson County has now resulted in a lawsuit.

A mother is suing the city of Nashville for failing to seek help from ambulance services in nearby counties.

The lawsuit, filed by Lori Gregory, claims if the city's ambulance service had reached out for aid from towns on the border of Davidson County, her son may have had a greater chance of surviving the crash that killed him.

Gregory's son J.R. Ballentine crashed within the border of Davidson County last May. It took a Metro ambulance 16 minutes to get to the scene, but just three minutes away from the crash scene, the city of Ridgetop had an ambulance waiting.

"Every day, I wonder, 'Would he have made it?'" Gregory said.

Instead of a dispatcher asking for aid from Ridgetop, a Metro ambulance was dispatched from father away in Davidson County.

The lawsuit reads, "The refusal of (Nashville) Metro government employees to summon help from the nearest available first responders reduced her son's chances for survival, or, at a minimum, increase the pain and suffering he was experiencing from his injuries."

An earlier I-Team investigation found others who live on Davidson County's border saying they, too, had to wait for Metro ambulances, even though an ambulance was waiting nearby just outside the county border.

An I-Team analysis of a year's worth of ambulance response times in Davidson County shows 531 times when ambulances took 15 minutes or longer to respond to an emergency call. Of those 531 responses, 316 of them occurred in the rural areas near Davidson County's border.

The National Fire Protection Association dictates that a person in an emergency needs advanced life support, such as what an ambulance provides, within eight minutes. The I-Team investigation found that in 78 of the 531 responses, ambulances took between 20 and 30 minutes to respond.

The Nashville Fire Department referred the I-Team's questions about the lawsuit to the city's legal department. A spokesperson for Metro legal said they haven't seen the lawsuit yet and can't comment on pending litigation.

But in the I-Team's initial investigation, Nashville Fire Chief Stephen Halford pointed out those lengthy response response times the I-Team discovered make up less than 1 percent of the department's overall response times.

"What do you say to people in an emergency who have to wait 20, 25, 30 minutes for an ambulance?" asked I-Team Chief Investigative Reporter Jeremy Finley.

"I would say it's very rare that anyone would have to wait. Very, very rare. It's difficult, because it's their emergency, and it happened to them. It doesn't work to say, 'We're sorry; this only happens in less than 1/2 or of 1 percent,'" Halford said.

He said that on every emergency call, a fire engine gets there within eight minutes with firefighters trained in basic life support. Yet less than half of all Nashville fire engines have firefighters on board trained in advanced life support. Again, national standards require that advanced life support arrives within eight minutes of an emergency.

Halford said he also knows only an ambulance can transport someone to top medical care at a hospital, and that it's difficult to explain why an ambulance just outside the county border can't respond.

The I-Team found more cases, like the fact that it took 30 minutes for an ambulance to respond to a call on Old Franklin Road, while an ambulance station in La Vergne was six miles away across the county line.

Ridgetop Mayor Darrell Denton's city is split: Half of it is in Robertson County, and half of it is in Davidson County. Denton said he tells his citizens in Davidson County to lie to 911 if they need an ambulance.