After including new attorneys to her trigger, Karen Learn stated she intends to ask the court docket to toss a civil case towards her.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield, was acquitted final month of prison costs together with second-degree homicide within the Jan. 29, 2022, demise of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend on the time. With that trial now over, a civil case towards her by the O’Keefe household is allowed to proceed.
However a submitting within the Plymouth Superior Courtroom civil case on Wednesday exhibits that Learn needs the case thrown out earlier than it actually 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 everything of the submitting by her attorneys William Keville, Christopher George and Marissa Palladini.
The jargon-filled message simply telegraphs that one thing of extra substance was served to the events of the case, however that doc is just not but publicly viewable within the case docket. Rule 9E handles motions to dismiss, which in flip requires the usage of “Rule 9A(b)(2), called the “Rule 9A package,” or the service of a mandated set of paperwork.
It’s the sixth submitting this month in a case that had been dormant since April as a result of prison trial. The opposite latest filings are the addition of attorneys Aaron Davis Rosenberg, Charles Waters and Damon Seligson to Learn’s group; a discover that the case was now on the Superior Courtroom location in Plymouth; and that lawyer Kevin Bergin was withdrawing as lawyer for the 2 bars additionally focused by the lawsuit.
Whereas the jury at Norfolk Superior Courtroom final month cleared Learn of her indicted costs of second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorcar below the affect of liquor and leaving the scene of an accident leading to demise, it did convict her of a lesser cost: drunken driving.
Civil trials characteristic a a lot decrease bar for jurors or a decide to seek out in favor of the plaintiff, which on this case is the O’Keefe household as represented by John O’Keefe’s youthful brother Paul O’Keefe. The household filed the lawsuit final August towards Learn and the Canton bars C.F. McCarthy’s and Waterfall Bar & Grille — the place Learn and O’Keefe drank collectively instantly previous his demise.
The swimsuit alleges the identical occasions because the prison prosecutors: that Learn and O’Keefe argued into the midnight hour of Jan. 29, 2022; that O’Keefe received out of Learn’s automobile at 34 Fairview Highway in Canton; and that Learn, “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 swimsuit alleges.
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