Kimberly Trimble 

Kimberly S. Trimble leads Singleton Schreiber’s civil rights practice. In nearly all her cases, she represents a plaintiff who claims to have been injured by police misconduct.

The one non-civil rights case she has currently is a habeas petition for a former civil rights client who is challenging his wrongful conviction.

Late last month, Trimble wrapped up two weeks of depositions on behalf of a man who claims he was assaulted by a corrections officer at the U.S. Marshal’s privately run El Centro Detention Center. Brouhard v. The Geo Group, Inc., 3:22-cv-01578 (S.D. Cal., Oct. 13, 2022).

About the same time, she settled litigation by a woman whose 16-year-old son died of a drug overdose while in San Diego’s juvenile hall. Trimble had argued that at least 10 hours had passed before any staff member noticed the teen, despite a state requirement of safety checks every 15 minutes. Arguelles v. County of San Diego, 3:23-cv-00321 (S.D. Cal., filed Feb. 17, 2023).

Trimble joined Singleton Schreiber in November 2020 after spending nine years with Federal Defenders of San Diego. Prior to the move, she was part of the office’s appellate division and was handling a death penalty case. But when that case concluded and the pandemic shrank the number of appeals, she decided it was a good time to transition to private practice and civil work.

Initially, she worked on the firm’s cases for wildfire victims. But “it was always the plan for me to work on civil rights cases down the road,” she said. She started taking on those cases early in 2021 and became the lead of the practice that December.

Early on, Trimble also helped prepare a major civil rights case for a retrial. The firm represented the family of a troubled man who died in custody after San Diego deputy sheriffs tased, beat and hogtied him. In March last year, the jury awarded $85 million. K.J.P v. County of San Diego, 3:15-cv-02692 (S.D. Cal., filed Dec. 1, 2015).

Although she didn’t appear in the trial, she said the case “had a very significant impact on me just being able to be involved in a trial of that magnitude so early in my civil career.”

Trimble almost went to trial early this year on behalf of a woman who deputy sheriffs shot in the chest with a rubber bullet as she waited for her children some distance away from an ongoing George Floyd-related protest. Weeks before the trial was to start, the parties agreed to a $250,000 settlement. Horton v. County of San Diego, 3:21-cv-00400 (S.D. Cal., March 5, 2021).

Currently, she is handling a case pro bono on a court appointment representing a man who “is now a paraplegic after a botched surgery while he was in custody,” she said. Voage v. Shpaner, 3:21-cv-00420 (S.D. Cal., filed March 9, 2021).

— Don DeBenedictis