Karen Read and Aidan Kearney asked a judge to freeze the defamation case against them while they appeal. The judge said no. Discovery continues, documents get exchanged, and depositions can go forward, all while the appeal on their free speech defense proceeds separately.
The reasoning the judge gave is the practical one: delay costs evidence. Witnesses forget, records go missing, and a case about statements made in 2024 and earlier does not improve with age. The ruling was reported Friday by Boston 25 News.
Underneath it is a piece of Massachusetts law that almost nobody outside the litigation bar follows and that decides cases like this one. The statute is the anti-SLAPP law, and the Supreme Judicial Court rewrote how it works two years ago in a decision that made these appeals both more common and harder to win. This piece explains the suit, the ruling, and the framework.
The lawsuit
Four people who testified in Read’s murder trials sued her and Kearney for defamation: Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Colin Albert. They allege the two falsely accused them of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe in Canton on January 29, 2022.
Read was acquitted of murder in June 2025. She has filed her own suit against law enforcement, McCabe, Brian Albert and three other civilian witnesses, alleging they orchestrated a cover-up to frame her.
Read and Kearney both moved to dismiss the defamation case, arguing it was brought to punish constitutionally protected speech. Those motions were denied. They are appealing, and the request the judge rejected Friday was to pause everything in the trial court until that appeal is resolved.
What an anti-SLAPP motion is
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation, a suit filed not to win but to impose the cost of defending it on someone who spoke up. Massachusetts responded in 1994 with G.L. c. 231, § 59H, which lets a defendant file a special motion to dismiss, stays discovery while it is pending, and awards attorney’s fees to a defendant who wins.
The protection is narrower than people assume. Section 59H covers a defendant’s exercise of the right to petition the government: statements made to a legislature, an agency or a court, or reasonably likely to encourage government consideration of an issue. It is not a general free speech statute. Criticism published to the public, rather than directed at influencing a government body, frequently falls outside it, and that threshold question is where most of these motions are decided.
What Bristol Asphalt changed
For years the governing framework came from Duracraft and then from Blanchard v. Steward Carney Hospital, Inc., 477 Mass. 141 (2017), which had layered an additional test onto it. The SJC scrapped that in Bristol Asphalt Co. v. Rochester Bituminous Products, Inc., decided February 29, 2024.
The court said it was returning to a “simplified anti-SLAPP framework,” and eliminating “the additional analysis set forth in Blanchard I and Blanchard II,” returning “to the traditional approach set out in Duracraft.” The Blanchard approach had required courts to parse the factual allegations supporting a claim so that portions of a claim could be dismissed, and had added a multifactor test examining the subjective motivation of the party bringing the claim. Both are gone.
The court also changed the standard of review: “we clarify that the appropriate standard of review for a ruling on a special motion to dismiss is de novo, rather than for an abuse of discretion.”
Those two moves pull in opposite directions, which is what makes the decision interesting. Narrowing the substantive test makes anti-SLAPP motions harder to win. Making review de novo means an appellate court decides the question fresh, without deferring to the trial judge, which makes an appeal from a denial more attractive. More appeals, on a narrower standard.
Why the stay was denied, and what that means
The anti-SLAPP statute stays discovery while a special motion is pending in the trial court. It does not automatically stay a case while an appeal from a denial is pending. That is a separate request, addressed to the judge’s discretion, and the party seeking it generally must show a likelihood of success on appeal and that the balance of harms favors delay.
The judge weighed the harms and found delay riskier than proceeding. Evidence degrades. That is a conventional ruling and it tells you nothing about how the appeal will come out.
What it does mean practically is significant for the defendants. They must now participate in discovery in a case they say should never have been filed, which is precisely the burden the anti-SLAPP statute exists to prevent. If they win the appeal, they will have borne that cost anyway and will be able to seek fees. If they lose it, the case was always going forward.
Where this one probably turns
On whether the statements were petitioning activity at all.
Read’s statements have a stronger claim to that description than a blogger’s posts do, because much of what she said was said in connection with her own criminal defense and her efforts to get government bodies to examine the investigation. Petitioning includes statements reasonably likely to enlist public participation in an effort to obtain government consideration, which reaches some public advocacy.
Kearney’s position is harder in one respect and easier in another. A large volume of published commentary aimed at a general audience is not obviously petitioning. But his central claim, that he was reporting on and campaigning about an official investigation he says was corrupt, is squarely the activity the statute was written to protect. The SJC has never held that a blogger is categorically outside § 59H.
Bristol Asphalt’s elimination of claim parsing matters here too. Under Blanchard, a court could dissect a complaint and dismiss the portions resting on protected petitioning while letting the rest proceed. It can no longer do that. The motion is now evaluated against the claim as a whole, which tends to help plaintiffs whose complaints mix protected and unprotected statements.
What to watch
The appeal itself, which will be decided de novo and could produce a published decision on how § 59H applies to online commentary about a criminal case, an issue with no clear Massachusetts precedent. Whether discovery produces disputes that reach the appellate court first. And Kearney’s separate criminal matters, which his counsel has described as three remaining in Superior Court after earlier counts were dismissed and he was acquitted of violating a restraining order.
Common questions
What did the judge decide?
That the defamation case against Karen Read and Aidan Kearney will not be paused while they appeal the denial of their motions to dismiss. Discovery continues, and the appeal proceeds separately.
What is an anti-SLAPP motion?
A special motion to dismiss under G.L. c. 231, § 59H, available to a defendant sued over the exercise of the right to petition the government. It stays discovery while pending and awards fees to a defendant who wins.
Does anti-SLAPP protect all speech?
No. It protects petitioning activity, meaning statements to or aimed at influencing a government body. Commentary published to the public at large often falls outside it.
What did Bristol Asphalt change?
The SJC eliminated the added Blanchard analysis, returning to the simpler Duracraft approach, and held that review of a ruling on a special motion is de novo rather than for abuse of discretion.
Who sued them?
Jennifer McCabe, Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Colin Albert, four witnesses from Read’s murder trials, who allege they were falsely accused of killing John O’Keefe.
The ruling denying the stay and the parties’ positions as reported by Boston 25 News, September 18, 2026. Bristol Asphalt Co., Inc. v. Rochester Bituminous Products, Inc., SJC-13460 (Feb. 29, 2024), read in full and quoted from the slip opinion; the decision has no reporter citation on CourtListener and is cited by docket and date. Blanchard v. Steward Carney Hospital, Inc., 477 Mass. 141 (2017), verified against CourtListener. G.L. c. 231, § 59H described from the statute. Karen Read was acquitted of murder in June 2025. The defamation allegations against both defendants are unproven. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.