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Karen Read case: Judge drops one claim from wrongful death lawsuit, allows the rest
The ruling dismisses a claim that Read negligently inflicted emotional distress on John O’Keefe’s teenage niece.
A judge has dismissed a claim that Karen Read negligently inflicted emotional distress on John O’Keefe’s teenage niece, who previously testified that Read woke her in a panic the morning O’Keefe died.
However, Friday’s ruling from Plymouth Superior Court Judge Daniel O’Shea largely rejects a motion to dismiss Read filed in August as she fights the wrongful death lawsuit from her former boyfriend’s family. The decision leaves the O’Keefes free to move forward with other claims in their complaint.
More on Karen Read:
Read, 45, was acquitted in June of murder and manslaughter charges in O’Keefe’s January 2022 death. Prosecutors accused her of drunkenly mowing O’Keefe down with her SUV while dropping him off at an afterparty in Canton, but Read’s attorneys were adamant she was framed in a vast law enforcement conspiracy.
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In the end, Read was convicted only of a drunk driving misdemeanor, for which she received a year of probation.
O’Keefe lived with his young niece and nephew in Canton after both their parents died months apart, and Read also took on a semi-parental role with the children. However, O’Keefe’s niece testified in May that the relationship had begun to sour in the weeks before his death, and that she’d even heard O’Keefe tell Read their relationship “was good, but it had run its course.”
Early in the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, the teen awoke to Read frantically shaking her and telling her O’Keefe hadn’t come home. She testified she overheard Read “asking what could’ve happened,” including questions such as, “could I have done something?” and “could he have gotten hit by a plow?”
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The teen also alleged she heard Read say, “maybe I hit him.”
According to O’Shea, it can be inferred Read knew O’Keefe’s niece “was a vulnerable minor who previously lost both parents” and “would be particularly vulnerable to distress caused by an additional loss of a parental figure.” But while the judge found support for the niece’s claims of both intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, he stopped short of allowing the negligent infliction claim.
O’Keefe’s parents and brother stand on “different footing” with their negligent infliction of emotional distress claims, according to O’Shea, because they arrived at the hospital “promptly” upon learning of O’Keefe’s death and saw his badly injured body.
The family’s wrongful death lawsuit also names the two bars where Read and O’Keefe drank the night he died. Separately, Read’s attorneys have asked O’Shea for permission to bring several claims against witnesses and investigators from her murder case.
The civil suit is due back in court Nov. 21.
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