A state appeals court on Monday reversed San Diego County’s dismissal from a lawsuit regarding a former jail deputy who groped a teenage girl and used sheriff’s records to access the girl’s personal information.
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A judge found in 2024 that San Diego County was not liable for invading the girl’s privacy because Deputy Timothy Wilson did not access the girl’s information within the scope of his employment and instead did so for personal reasons.
Wilson, who groped the then-14-year-old girl in 2018 while off-duty at a Vista fast food restaurant, later accessed the girl’s personal information, which had been provided to sheriff’s officials as part of their investigation into the groping incident, according to the appellate ruling.
Court documents state that he viewed the girl’s investigative file at least 44 times, downloaded the girl’s photographs and learned her home address.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Matthew Braner wrote in his ruling that Wilson accessed the teen’s information in violation of county policies “because he feared he would be or had been identified as the assaulter, and could potentially evade discovery if he knew the progress of the investigation.” The judge wrote that this motivation was not law enforcement related.
Wilson was criminally charged, pleaded guilty, was sentenced in October 2018 to one year in jail. He was also required to register as a sex offender.
A three-justice panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal wrote in its that though Wilson’s actions may have stemmed from personal motivations, jurors could find he was acting within the scope of his employment, as accessing such records was a typical part of his job and could be seen as “reasonably related to the tasks he was employed to perform.”
The panel wrote that reasonable jurors could conclude that the risks of deputies misusing their access to such information was foreseeable.
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“A jury could conclude Wilson’s access to (Jane) Doe’s investigative file was reasonably related to the duties the county entrusted to detention deputies, or alternatively, that the county’s decision to provide detention deputies broad access to sensitive investigative information made the misuse of that access reasonably foreseeable given the sheriff’s department’s operations,” the panel’s opinion states. “Because the evidence supports either inference, the question whether Wilson acted within the scope of his employment is one for the jury, not the court on summary judgment.”
Joseph McMullen, one of Jane Doe’s attorneys, told the Union-Tribune that he and his client were pleased with Monday’s ruling, which will result in the case being sent back to San Diego Superior Court to proceed toward trial.
“It restores the opportunity to hold the County accountable for failing to safeguard San Diego crime victims’ most sensitive private information and photographs,” McMullen told the Union-Tribune. “Essentially, the litigation picks back up from the point where the summary judgment was originally granted.”
McMullen said that evidence in the case showed that detention deputies from the Sheriff’s Office “routinely snooped in sensitive investigative files for their own entertainment,” and that the Sheriff’s Office had the technology to prevent such intrusions, but chose not to use it.
He pointed to a portion of the appellate ruling in which the justices wrote: “A reasonable juror could conclude the County knowingly afforded detention deputies broad access to sensitive investigative information while relying primarily on policy, rather than technological restrictions, to prevent misuse.”
The county did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment on the appellate ruling.
“We look forward to the opportunity to present this case to a jury and ask them to hold the County accountable for letting a child sexual assault victim’s investigative file become the source of sick employee entertainment at the Vista jail,” McMullen said.
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As of Tuesday, no new court dates had been set in the Superior Court case.
Union-Tribune staff writer Alex Riggins contributed to this report.
