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Karen Read asks judge to toss part of O’Keefe family’s wrongful death suit
Read’s lawyers said she “vehemently denies” she is liable in John O’Keefe’s death, “as there was no collision.”
Now gearing up for yet another legal battle, Karen Read is asking a judge to dismiss part of the wrongful death lawsuit brought against her by the family of John O’Keefe, her former boyfriend.
The late Boston police officer’s family has accused Read of driving drunk and backing into O’Keefe with her SUV as she dropped him off at a home in Canton early on Jan. 29, 2022. Prosecutors offered a similar narrative when they tried Read for second-degree murder earlier this year, but a jury ultimately acquitted Read of her most serious charges and convicted her only of drunk driving.
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In newly filed court documents, Read’s civil defense attorneys argue that O’Keefe’s family can’t “recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress based upon the occurrence of the alleged accident because they were not at the scene, nor did they witness the immediate consequences to [O’Keefe].”
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Read also “vehemently denies” she is liable, “as there was no collision between the Defendant’s SUV and John J. O’Keefe III leading to his injury or death,” they added. Read has long maintained someone else is to blame for killing O’Keefe, floating an alternate theory that her boyfriend was mortally wounded after joining an afterparty inside 34 Fairview Road.
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Plaintiffs in the wrongful death suit include O’Keefe’s brother, Paul, his parents, and his teenage niece, who lived with O’Keefe after she and her brother lost their parents just months apart. The complaint also names as defendants the two Canton bars where Read and O’Keefe drank the night he died.
A lawyer for the O’Keefes pushed back on Read’s motion to dismiss in a sharply worded rebuttal, asserting the family “has suffered and continues to suffer immense emotional trauma from this wrongful death, which has been further intensified by the unyielding barrage of harassment and ridicule by Read and her supporters targeting the grieving family.”
Attorney Marc Diller further alleged that Read “calculatedly and maliciously fabricated a conspiracy and launched a public campaign of disinformation designed to obfuscate the truth” and deprive O’Keefe’s family of justice. He specifically pointed to Read’s communications with Turtleboy blogger Aidan Kearney, who has promoted the defense narrative that others are to blame for O’Keefe’s death.
Read’s legal team denies she orchestrated a disinformation campaign. The two local bars named in the lawsuit, Waterfall Bar & Grille and C.F. McCarthy’s, have also signed onto Read’s motion to dismiss.
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The civil case could see Read testifying under oath about O’Keefe’s death for the first time. Previous Plymouth Superior Court rulings delayed the deposition of Read and several of her relatives until after her criminal trial.
O’Keefe’s family is seeking at least $50,000 in the lawsuit. The case is due back in court Sept. 22.
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