Karen Read asks Massachusetts court to throw out wrongful death lawsuit after murder acquittal

Karen Read, cleared last month of murder charges in the death of her former boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, is asking a Massachusetts court to throw out the wrongful death lawsuit his family filed against her, according to a new court filing.

The O’Keefes named Read and two bars the couple visited in the hours before his death in a lawsuit seeking an unspecified sum of more than $50,000.

She has a different legal team in the civil case than the high-profile criminal defense team that helped win her freedom. Read’s civil lawyers notified the court Wednesday they had served a motion to dismiss to all parties.

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“It’s basically notice that there is an out-of-court procedure going on,” said Jack Lu, a retired Massachusetts judge and Boston College law professor. “Moving party files a (Rule) 9A package with the other sides. The other sides send their opposition packages to the moving party. They agree on anything they can, and the whole big package is forwarded to the court, which schedules a hearing or rules without a hearing.”

It doesn’t mean the sides are getting any closer to a settlement, however, he said.

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The O’Keefes filed the lawsuit in August 2024, after Read’s first trial ended with a deadlocked jury. The court put it on hold until her second trial ended.

She was acquitted of all homicide-related charges but convicted of a drunken driving offense for which she received probation.

Read was accused of hitting her boyfriend with a Lexus SUV and leaving him to die in the snow, but prosecutors failed to convince the jury despite finding shattered taillight fragments in the victim’s clothes.

In her first trial, Read’s defense said she had been framed. In the second, she denied a collision ever happened, and her lawyers pointed to glaring holes in the investigation.

According to the lawsuit, in the days before O’Keefe’s death, “Read picked fights, experienced jealousy and had delusions of unfaithfulness.”

They went out drinking Jan. 28, 2022, stopping at C.F. McCarthy’s and then the Waterfall Bar and Grille, both in Canton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

The lawsuit accuses staff at McCarthy’s of letting Read leave with a drink in her hand and the Waterfall of serving her when she was visibly intoxicated. Like state prosecutors, it also accuses Read of knocking O’Keefe to the ground with her car and leaving him to die in the snow with a head injury during a blizzard.

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The burden of proof is held to a lower standard in lawsuits. In the 1990s, former NFL star O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman but found civilly liable for their deaths.

Read is accused of “knowingly and deliberately” changing her story, concocting “a conspiracy” and publicizing a “false narrative, thereby frustrating Justice for JJ.”

JJ was O’Keefe’s nickname, and the family alleges Read’s narrative caused them “aggravated emotional distress.”