Canton bar denies claims in wrongful death suit from John O’Keefe’s family

C.F. McCarthy’s, a Canton bar named in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, says it’s not responsible for O’Keefe’s death in January 2022.

“No acts or omissions of C.F. McCarthy’s, if any, were the proximate cause of the Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries and damages, and said injuries and damages, if any, were the result of other intervening and superseding causes for which C.F. McCarthy’s is not legally responsible,” lawyers for the bar wrote in a response filed Friday in Plymouth Superior Court.

C.F. McCarthy’s is one of two bars where O’Keefe and his girlfriend, Karen Read, drank with friends and acquaintances in the hours leading up to his death on Jan. 29, 2022.

The officer’s family filed their wrongful death lawsuit last month, alleging Read drunkenly backed her SUV into O’Keefe after consuming a total of nine drinks at C.F. McCarthy’s and the nearby Waterfall Bar & Grille. The lawsuit names Read and both bars as defendants. 

Read also has a pending criminal case, having pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. A retrial is slated for January following a mistrial July 1.

O’Keefe’s family alleges C.F. McCarthy’s served alcohol to a “visibly intoxicated” Read before she purportedly struck and killed O’Keefe. The bar served Read a total of seven drinks in the span of about an hour-and-a-half, the family’s attorney, Marc Diller, alleged in an affidavit Friday. 

Diller pointed to testimony from Read’s first trial, where a forensic scientist formerly with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab Toxicology Unit testified that Read’s blood alcohol content would have been between 0.135% and 0.292% at 12:45 a.m. on the 29th, based on a blood test at Good Samaritan Medical Center later that morning. 

“Through further discovery and expert testimony, it will become clear that at the times of Defendant Read’s service, C.F. McCarthy’s should have recognized her visible signs of intoxication and refrained from serving her more alcoholic beverages,” Diller wrote. 

In its own filing, however, C.F. McCarthy’s asserted it did not violate the state law barring alcohol sales to intoxicated individuals.

“The Plaintiffs’ claims are barred, in whole or in part, to the extent that Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries and damages were solely and proximately caused by the intervening negligence, gross negligence, wantonness, recklessness, willfulness, or otherwise careless, willful, intentional and/or criminal conduct of an independent third party for which C.F. McCarthy’s is not legally responsible and/or exercised no control,” the bar’s response states. 

In another affidavit aimed at the Waterfall, Diller alleged Read “showed visible signs of intoxication” upon arriving at the second bar shortly before 11 p.m. Read received two more drinks at the Waterfall before she and O’Keefe departed after midnight, according to Diller. 

Neither Read nor the Waterfall has formally responded to the family’s lawsuit, though online court records indicate Read has retained three new attorneys to represent her in the civil case.