News

Nov 09, 2024

Massachusetts SJC orders $70K engagement ring be returned to man in failed love story

A man who purchased a ring for a pricey $70,000 will be getting it back from his ex-fiancée after breaking off the engagement when he grew wary of infidelity in the relationship. The Massachusetts

A man who purchased a ring for a pricey $70,000 will be getting it back from his ex-fiancée after breaking off the engagement when he grew wary of infidelity in the relationship.

The Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court made the ruling after a six-year battle filled with twists and turns over whether the mister would recover the ring or the madam would keep it forever.

For more than six decades, the state’s highest court recognized an antenuptial ring as a conditional gift that the giver may recover following a failed engagement, only if he or she was “without fault.”

That stance has changed with Friday’s ruling in the failed love story of Bruce Johnson and Caroline Settino.

“We now join the modern trend adopted by the majority of jurisdictions that have considered the issue and retire the concept of fault in this context,” Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote in her decision, “where, as here, the planned wedding does not ensue and the engagement is ended, the engagement ring must be returned to the donor regardless of fault.”

Johnson’s years-long fight to get the ring and wedding bands back from Settino took center stage in Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court in Boston in September.

Attorney Stephanie Taverna Siden argued for Johnson, requesting the high court overturn a trial court’s decision that Settino kept the ring and award the expensive bling back to her client.

Taverna Siden said she also wants the SJC to change the state law on how engagement rings are treated after a breakup, for Massachusetts to adopt a “no-fault, conditional gift rule.”

“It is the most equitable and efficient approach and prevents courts from wading into the details of private relationships,” Taverna Siden wrote in an April court filing.

“The Court should continue to treat engagement rings as conditional gifts,” she added, “because the status of conditional gifts preserves the special significance of the engagement ring and also prevents unjust enrichment.”

All had been faring well in the love shared between Bruce Johnson and Caroline Settino, with the couple getting engaged at the glitzy Wequassett Resort & Golf Club in Harwich, on Cape Cod, in late August 2017.

The engagement came just over a week after Johnson purchased a $70,000 engagement ring at Tiffany’s jewelry store in Boston, astronomically higher than the $5,500 cost average in the country, according to The Knot.

The couple purchased two wedding bands from Tiffany’s with the wedding date, planned for September 2018, inscribed inside for over $3,700, according to court documents.

Instead of exchanging vows that year, Johnson served Settino with a lawsuit after he had reason to believe she was cheating on him.

Tension escalated in November 2017 when Johnson went through Settino’s phone and saw a text she sent to another man, reading “[m]y Bruce is going to be in Connecticut for three days. I need some playtime.”

Johnson grew wary of Settino’s infidelity, believing she was having “sexual intercourse” with the other man, court documents state.

Herald Poll: Who should keep an engagement ring?

A Brockton Superior Court judge ruled in 2021 that those fears were unwarranted, and Settino and the other man were “friends and not romantically involved.” The court ruled Settino could keep the ring and ordered Johnson to pay more than $42,000 in planned dental work he had promised he’d fund during the engagement.

“It is generally held that an engagement ring is in the nature of a pledge, given on the implied condition that the marriage shall take place,” documents state, citing the trial court’s ruling. “If the contract to marry is terminated without fault on the part of the donor, he may recover the ring.”

An appeals court then ruled in favor of Johnson before Settino looked for the Supreme Judicial Court to overturn that ruling.

“I was a teacher, I had 60 people from my school coming to the wedding,” Settino said in Appeals Court last year. “We were putting them all up for two days at the resort, we had all sorts of things … so when he called off the wedding and said I was cheating, I was devastated.”