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Karen Read, acquitted of murder, wants to toss civil case against her

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

BOSTON — After adding new attorneys to her cause, Karen Read said she intends to ask the court to toss a civil case against her.

Read, 45, of Mansfield, was acquitted last month of criminal charges including second-degree murder in the Jan. 29, 2022, death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend at the time. With that trial now over, a civil case against her by the O’Keefe family is allowed to continue.

But a filing in the Plymouth Superior Court civil case on Wednesday shows that Read wants the case thrown out before it really begins. A trial date has not been set.

“Pursuant to Superior Court Rule 9E, the Defendant, Karen Read, hereby notifies the Court that she served a Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Superior Court Rule 9A upon all parties on July 9, 2025,” reads the entirety of the filing by her attorneys William Keville, Christopher George and Marissa Palladini.

The jargon-filled message just telegraphs that something of more substance was served to the parties of the case, but that document is not yet publicly viewable in the case docket. Rule 9E handles motions to dismiss, which in turn requires the use of “Rule 9A(b)(2), called the “ Rule 9A package,” or the service of a mandated set of documents.

It’s the sixth filing this month in a case that had been dormant since April due to the criminal trial. The other recent filings are the addition of attorneys Aaron Davis Rosenberg, Charles Waters and Damon Seligson to Read’s team; a notice that the case was now at the Superior Court location in Plymouth; and that attorney Kevin Bergin was withdrawing as attorney for the two bars also targeted by the lawsuit.

 

While the jury at Norfolk Superior Court last month cleared Read of her indicted charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, it did convict her of a lesser charge: drunken driving.

Civil trials feature a much lower bar for jurors or a judge to find in favor of the plaintiff, which in this case is the O’Keefe family as represented by John O’Keefe’s younger brother Paul O’Keefe. The family filed the lawsuit last August against Read and the Canton bars C.F. McCarthy’s and Waterfall Bar & Grille — where Read and O’Keefe drank together immediately preceding his death.

The suit alleges the same events as the criminal prosecutors: that Read and O’Keefe argued into the midnight hour of Jan. 29, 2022; that O’Keefe got out of Read’s vehicle at 34 Fairview Road in Canton; and that Read, “in a state of intoxication,” drove her SUV into O’Keefe, who then “suffered serious injury and died.”

“At all relevant times, defendant Read knew that it was snowing, knew there was an impending blizzard and knew or should have known that leaving JJ (the family nickname for O’Keefe) outside in the blizzard would likely result in serious injury or death,” the suit alleges.

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