‘I wasn’t going to give up’: How one woman’s legal fight for her late husband is helping other survivors

After a federal judge dismissed Anna Sandoval’s lawsuit over her husband’s death in a San Diego jail, she faced a choice: walk away or keep fighting.

The ruling came nearly two years after she filed her lawsuit arguing three jail nurses had violated her husband Ronnie’s constitutional rights by failing to respond to obvious signs of medical distress. And it came four years after his death at 46.

Appeals in federal civil rights cases can take years and rarely succeed.

“I wasn’t going to give up,” Sandoval said. “I wanted them to be accountable.”

Five years ago this month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s ruling and revived the case.

But the judges also published the opinion — a step taken in only about 8% of appeals. That made the ruling binding precedent, meaning other federal courts in the western United States must follow it when evaluating similar jail medical-care cases.

“Sandoval broke barriers for the civil rights community regarding inadequate medical care claims,” said Danielle Pena, one of Anna Sandoval’s attorneys. “In every one of my cases, judges cite Sandoval as the standard.”

In the years since it was published, Sandoval v. County of San Diego has been cited often in jail-death litigation and routinely invoked by plaintiffs and judges in cases involving claims of delayed or inadequate medical care.

“Before Sandoval, defendants would argue that even obvious failures were...