VISTA — A state appeals court reversed San Diego County’s dismissal from a lawsuit involving a former jail deputy who groped a teenage girl and used sheriff’s records to access her personal information.
A judge found in 2024 that San Diego County was not liable for invading the girl’s privacy because former deputy Timothy Wilson did not access her information within the scope of his employment and instead did so for personal reasons.
Wilson groped the then-14-year-old girl in 2018 while off duty at a Vista fast-food restaurant. He later accessed personal information she had provided to sheriff’s officials as part of their investigation, according to the appellate ruling.
Court documents state that he viewed the girl’s investigative file at least 44 times, downloaded her photographs and learned her home address.
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 related to law enforcement.
Wilson was criminally charged, pleaded guilty, was sentenced to one year in jail and was required to register as a sex offender.
A three-justice panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal wrote in its opinion issued Monday that although Wilson’s actions may have stemmed from personal motivations, jurors could find he was acting within the scope of his employment. 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.
The panel also wrote that reasonable jurors could conclude the risk of deputies misusing their access to such information was foreseeable.
“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.”
