Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
Who is leading Karen Read’s defense in wrongful death suit?
First there was Jackson and Yannetti. Now, a new contender has taken up Karen Read’s cause.
Rising from his seat to address the court, attorney Damon Seligson kept a neutral and measured tone that belied an explosive message: His client, Karen Read, plans to sue the investigators and witnesses who had her pegged for murder.
The Sept. 22 announcement opened a new chapter of Read’s complicated legal saga and thrust Seligson — the lead attorney for her civil matters — into the spotlight of one of the most high-profile Massachusetts cases in recent memory.
He said in an interview that rather than staying on the defensive, Read will be “pushing forward” with the facts and evidence surrounding the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. The civil case already has many moving parts, between Read’s affirmative claims and the wrongful death lawsuit she’s facing from O’Keefe’s family.
Advertisement:
“It is a behemoth,” Seligson acknowledged. “At the end of the day, the simple sadness of this case is that you’ve got John O’Keefe, who died tragically, and the family of John O’Keefe doesn’t have answers, and they’ve focused the spotlight, we believe, on the wrong person.”
Launching Karen Read’s civil case
Read, 45, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges earlier this year following a 2024 mistrial and highly publicized retrial.
More on Karen Read:
She’d been accused of drunkenly backing into O’Keefe with her SUV while dropping him off at an afterparty in Canton, then leaving him to die in the snow. Her lawyers had another theory: that O’Keefe met his fate after joining the party inside 34 Fairview Road, owned at the time by a fellow Boston police officer.
Advertisement:
According to Seligson, Read’s civil team is operating on the same basic theory as in her criminal case: “We claim there was no collision, and then [O’Keefe] went inside and something sinister happened inside.”
Read plans to bring legal action against several of the witnesses who were inside 34 Fairview Road that night, alleging they diverted attention away from themselves and conspired to put the blame on her instead. Read’s lawyers are seeking permission from Plymouth Superior Court Judge Daniel O’Shea to combine the O’Keefe family’s 2024 wrongful death suit with Read’s affirmative claims, given both rest on the same set of facts and witnesses.
“I mean, 10 new parties, 10 lawyers? It’s going to be unwieldy,” Seligson conceded. “And I think the judge sees that.”
He said Read’s team announced the affirmative claims early on not in a bid to make a splash or generate headlines, but to be transparent with the court as O’Shea sorts out scheduling.
“It’s tough to come out and start swinging for the fences like that when you’re sort of asking a judge to do something that’s, as he said, quite extraordinary,” Seligson explained. “So you’ve got to be delicate in how you convey that message.”
Damon Seligson: ‘Methodical, always well prepared’
Then again, Seligson is usually careful with his words.
Advertisement:
“I’m aware that I sound different,” the Sheehan Phinney attorney quipped through a strong South African accent. “I choose my words carefully, because I don’t want to be misunderstood — if I get too excited, I speak too fast.”
Born in Johannesburg, he left South Africa in 1988 in the midst of apartheid. He went to college in Connecticut before moving on to Suffolk University Law School, where he fell in love with Boston and put down roots.
“I think my upbringing puts me in a situation where I’ve always wanted to be in a situation where I can help someone who’s been wrongfully targeted, wrongfully subject to an abuse of power,” he said, reflecting on the weaponization of government he saw during his childhood. “I witnessed it growing up, and so it’s sort of full-circle to be able to help someone who we believe has been subject to the same behavior.”
Seligson’s practice has taken him across the spectrum of litigation, including defense work in health care and medical malpractice cases, wrongful death complaints, and other complex legal matters. As an example of one case that left a lasting mark, he cited a pro bono matter earlier on in his career involving a man seeking asylum.
Advertisement:
“That was very rewarding, but it showed me sort of how helpful lawyers can be to people who need access to justice, people who need access to trying to right wrongs,” he said.
But while he’s worked on other cases of similar complexity, in Read’s case “the spotlight is so bright, because it’s just got so many different tentacles to it,” Seligson said.
He became involved with Read’s case through his longtime connection to David Yannetti, a criminal defense attorney who represented Read during her two trials. (In a small-world twist, Seligson also graduated from Suffolk Law alongside special prosecutor Hank Brennan, who tried Read for murder during her retrial.)
As Seligson explained, Yannetti looped him in earlier this year to help Read’s parents, who had received a deposition notice for the civil case on the eve of her second criminal trial. He secured a delay that would allow Read’s parents to give their deposition after the trial, then kept tabs on Read’s case by showing up to her court appearances and staying involved in behind-the-scenes discussions.
As the civil case began to heat up following Read’s acquittal, Seligson took on a more active role leading her defense. Asked about his courtroom style, he described himself as something of a cool strategist.
“I’m not an inflammatory sort of flame-throwing lawyer that sometimes people are expecting in a case like this, but I will be methodical, always well prepared, and will be a strong advocate for whoever I’m representing,” he said. “So you will see a more fiery me once we get into the meat and potatoes.”
Advertisement:
Seligson compared his own style to that of defense attorney Alan Jackson, who represented Read during her criminal case and won over many trial watchers with his impassioned lawyering and camera-ready turns of phrase. By contrast, Seligson said, civil attorneys often wage their battles behind-the-scenes through the often unglamorous task of depositions and motions hearings.
Who else is on the team?
That’s not to say Jackson is out of the picture. The opposite, in fact; he’s joined Read’s civil team, bringing with him partners Elizabeth Little and Caleb Mason.
Speaking to Boston.com ahead of Read’s first criminal trial, the Los Angeles-based Jackson described himself as “proudly relentless” and said he’s “unafraid to ruffle feathers in order to get to the truth.”
“My particular strength is to take a set of complex facts and distill them into a digestible and understandable truth,” Jackson said.
Also on Read’s civil team are Melick & Porter attorneys William Keville, Christopher George, and Marissa Palladini, as well as two of Seligson’s Sheehan Phinney colleagues, Aaron Rosenberg and Charles Waters.
“Both stellar, highly competent litigation attorneys,” Seligson said of Rosenberg and Waters, adding, “The three of us will bring local knowledge about what is expected in a Massachusetts courtroom.”
“I am a strategy-focused person. Aaron Rosenberg is exceptional at writing, and Charles Waters is as aggressive as you’re going to find in the courtroom and at deposition,” he continued. “So we sort of complement one another, and we’ll all play different roles on Karen’s behalf with the support of Alan and his team.”
Advertisement:
Seligson said the civil team is laser-focused on the facts and attempting to tune out the “noise” surrounding Read’s high-profile case — to the extent possible, at least.
“I think the difference with a case like this is that the spotlight on everything we do is so bright, and we can’t get caught up in that,” he explained. “We have to do our job.”
Will Read’s civil case bring us inside 34 Fairview?
Still, Seligson is not blind to the controversy and debate that pervasively follows Read’s case. He predicted a particularly aggressive battle once Read’s lawyers know whether her affirmative claims will be allowed into the wrongful death suit.
“I’m sure it’s going to get very contentious,” he said. “It’s going to get intensive over the next few months as people try to not get included and we try and include them.”
As for the O’Keefes’ wrongful death complaint, Seligson believes the family has an uphill battle even with the preponderance of evidence standard, a much lighter burden of proof than in criminal law.
“We think we have good evidence to sustain our burden in this case,” he said. “But the real facts that I don’t think anyone can prove, because the evidence doesn’t support it, is that Karen Read’s Lexus struck John O’Keefe. The injuries are not consistent with a vehicle strike.”
Advertisement:
Two ARCCA Inc. crash reconstruction experts memorably testified for Read’s defense, opining that O’Keefe’s injuries were inconsistent with having been struck by Read’s SUV, and that damage to the vehicle was inconsistent with striking an arm, as prosecutors claimed.
Another defense witness, dog bite expert Dr. Marie Russell, testified that cuts along O’Keefe’s arm were actually from a dog attack, even though a forensic scientist with the University of California, Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory Forensic Unit testified that swabs from O’Keefe’s shirt showed no signs of canine DNA. Read’s lawyers zeroed in on a German shepherd that lived at 34 Fairview Road at the time but was later rehomed after attacking another dog.
Seligson anticipates a broader discovery process during Read’s civil case, suggesting her team may seek to delve into some of the evidence withheld from jurors during the two criminal trials.
“In a criminal trial, you’re much more constrained,” he explained. “So you know, if we have the opportunity to explore what took place in the basement [of 34 Fairview Road], to explore what took place with the dog that was aggressive that suddenly went missing or was rehomed, as they say, … we can explore that a little bit more as long as we can show it’s reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence and not some type of fishing expedition.”
Advertisement:
And at the end of the day, Read is eager to dive in.
“The idea here is not to delay. Karen doesn’t want to delay any more than the O’Keefes do,” Seligson said. “She wants the answers as well as they do.”
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com