Updated at 5:42 p.m. Monday, February 11

An Alameda County Superior Court judge will dismiss a lawsuit claiming the city was responsible for the Memorial Day 2011 drowning death of Raymond Zack off the shore of Robert W. Crown State Beach.

Judge George C. Hernandez Jr. ruled Monday that the city didn’t have a legal duty to rescue Zack from San Francisco Bay or to purchase a rescue boat, train and certify firefighters for water rescue or call other agencies for help. He said the city had until February 19 to draft a dismissal order for the case.

“The court finds that under the circumstances presented, there was no moral blame attendant to the conduct of responding officers and firefighters,” Judge Hernandez wrote in his five-page ruling.

He said the law is weighted against imposing liability on communities in such situations in order to prevent police and firefighters from thinking twice before they respond.

“(T)he policy of preventing future harm, extent of burden to defendants, and consequences to the community of finding a duty weigh heavily in favor of not imposing additional tort liability that would deter police and firefighters from responding to emergencies and rendering assistance in the type of highly volatile and unpredictable situations faced by the officers and firefighters here,” Judge Hernandez wrote.

Gregory M. Fox, who represented the city, called Zack's death "tragic and unfortunate" but noted that the court ruled in the city's favor even with the plaintiff's best evidence in hand.

"Obviously these people become public safety officers because they want to help the public. It’s a very difficult job," Fox said. "The law is there to provide protection for officers when they act reasonably and in good faith."

In a press release issued a few hours after the ruling, City Attorney Janet Kern was quoted as saying that it was "unfortunate that Mr. Zack was so distraught that he took his own life."

"However, the ruling amounts to a finding that the responding police officers and firefighters acted reasonably and diligently in what was undeniably a very difficult situation," Kern said.

Rob Cartwright, who is representing Zack's siblings in the case, said he was disappointed with the court's ruling and that he will ask the judge to reconsider the ruling, which doesn't allow Zack's family to refile their case. Cartwright, who accused public safety officials of making things worse for Zack through their conduct - an argument the judge disagreed with - and said they failed to follow written policies and procedures, said he'd like to be able to gather testimony and other evidence in an effort to press his case.

"We respectfully disagree as to whether or not – whether they had undertaken a duty and whether they had a duty to Zack, and whether they violated the duty," Cartwright said of the police and firefighters who responded that day. "There’s a reason that the public was outraged at what happened there."

Attorneys for Zack’s brother and sister, Robert Zack and Bernice Jolliff, sued the city in May 2012, saying Alameda’s public safety officials had a duty to rescue him and that the city should have trained and certified its firefighters to pull him out of the San Francisco Bay. They are also suing Alameda County, claiming county dispatchers failed to call on other public safety departments that could have come out to rescue Zack; that case has not yet been resolved. The family members are seeking unspecified damages and medical expenses.

The city’s attorneys argued in court filings that local public safety had no legal obligation to rescue Zack and that he put himself in danger by wading into the Bay. They said local police and firefighters’ obligation on the day of the incident was to protect themselves and the public.

Zack died on May 30, 2011 after wading into the water off the shore of Crown Beach in an apparent suicide attempt, as more than a dozen police and firefighters and onlookers watched. A kite surfer spoke with Zack during his final moments, and an off-duty psychiatric nurse pulled his body out of the water, against the advice of police.

The case prompted an international outcry and a scathing operational review from a former state fire marshal who criticized the departments' disjointed response, though the department's top brass said a year later that they had rectified the issues outlined in the review.

Related: Siblings of Memorial Day drowning victim to file suit

City’s attorneys ask judge to toss Zack case