A wrongful death suit filed by the family of John O’Keefe is poised to move forward after the verdict in Karen Read’s murder case, extending a legal battle that has continued for two-and-a-half years and two criminal trials.
Read, 45, was acquitted Wednesday of charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter by drunk driving, and leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death. She was convicted of a charge of operating under the influence, a misdemeanor. That was the sole charge available to jurors that did not involve them finding that Read ran into O’Keefe, her boyfriend and a Boston police officer, with her car.
Marc Diller, an attorney for the O’Keefe family, said the wrongful death suit will continue regardless of Read’s criminal acquittals.
“I expect that the civil suit is going to move forward, business as usual, now that the criminal matter is over,” Diller said.
Diller said the O’Keefe family “is still catching a breath” and would not comment at this time.
The suit had been largely on pause as Read’s second criminal trial proceeded. In October, Plymouth Superior Court Judge William White Jr. granted a motion from Read to delay her deposition and the collection of discovery until the end of the criminal case, citing Fifth Amendment concerns. In April, he expanded that order to members of Read’s family whom lawyers for O’Keefe family wanted to depose.
Thomas Merrigan, a retired attorney and state judge, said Read’s acquittals on murder and manslaughter charges deprive the plaintiffs in the wrongful death suit of powerful evidence. Read’s conviction for operating under the influence will likely have a “limited value” in the suit, Merrigan said.
“The civil case is about connecting the death of John O’Keefe to her operation of a motor vehicle,” he said. “I think the outcome of the criminal case certainly illustrates the difficulty, evidentiary-wise, of proving that connection.”
But the lower standard of proof in civil lawsuits — a “preponderance of the evidence,” rather than a criminal trial’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — means the family faces a lower burden in making its case, Merrigan said.
“It just requires a very slight movement past 50-50,” Merrigan said.
Read’s family filed the wrongful death suit in August 2024, nearly two months after Read’s first criminal trial ended with a hung jury.
The civil complaint largely echoed the arguments of prosecutors, who alleged that an intoxicated Read intentionally ran into O’Keefe after dropping him off outside a Canton home following a night of bar-hopping and heavy drinking.
The complaint describes O’Keefe’s death as a “direct and/or proximate cause of Read’s drunk driving.”
Read “knowingly and deliberately changed her story and fabricated a conspiracy knowing the same to be false,” the suit claimed. “Such false narrative caused the Plaintiffs aggravated emotional distress.”
Read and her supporters alleged that she had been framed as part of a broad law enforcement conspiracy, including members of local and state police.
The suit also names C.F. McCarthy’s and the Waterfall Bar & Grille, two Canton bars she visited with O’Keefe and others in the hours before his death. The complaint alleges that both bars contributed to O’Keefe’s death by overserving Read when she was already drunk.
Attorneys for Read and the Waterfall Bar & Grille did not immediately return requests for comment. An attorney for C.F. McCarthy’s declined to comment.
No trial date has been set in the civil case.
Dan Glaun can be reached at dan.glaun@globe.com. Follow him @dglaun.
