Massachusetts court says ‘no’ to keepsake: Woman must return US$70,000 engagement ring after breakup

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - The US$70,000 Tiffany engagement ring at the centre of a court battle before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Boston, Massachusetts is seen here in this undated photograph. — Reuters pic

BOSTON, Nov 10 — Massachusetts’ top court on Friday ruled that a would-be bride must return a US$70,000 (RM306,740) engagement ring from Tiffany & Co to her former fiancé in a decision that ended 65 years of courts in the New England state trying to sort through who is to blame when a relationship falls apart.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with Bruce Johnson in his years-long legal battle with his former romantic partner, Caroline Settino, in his bid to reclaim the pricey remnant of their relationship after he called off their wedding.

In making its ruling, the court said it was updating how it approaches lawsuits seeking the return of rings and join the “modern trend” of states that today treat engagements rings as gifts that must be returned to the donor regardless of fault.

Nicholas Rosenberg, Settino’s lawyer, in a statement called the ruling disappointing, saying that “the idea of an engagement ring as a conditional gift is predicated on outdated notions.”

Johnson’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Lawsuits seeking the return of rings are essentially the last remaining type of litigation over broken engagements recognised by US courts, after states in the 1930s started to abolish “heart balm” claims that women previously had been able to pursue when a marriage promise was called off.

Most states initially followed the approach the Massachusetts court adopted in 1959, which held that the giver of an engagement ring is entitled to its return so long as that person was not “at fault” for calling off the nuptials.

That principle in the lower courts had governed the dispute between Johnson, a retired senior staff engineer at Siemens, and Settino, a former schoolteacher.

Johnson called off his planned wedding to Settino in 2017 after seeing messages on her phone with another man and suspecting she was having an affair. Settino denies Johnson’s accusations, saying the man was a decades-old friend.

Johnson took Settino to court in 2018 to get the US$70,000 ring he proposed with back, but a judge concluded he was mistaken about the affair and must bear fault for their separation. But an appeals court reversed the ruling, leading to the appeal to the state high court.

Settino’s attorney had asked the court to avoid the “highly gendered” approach of treating a ring as a gift conditioned on a marriage and instead follow the Montana Supreme Court, which adopted a no-take-backs approach in 2002.

But the 6-0 court declined to do so, with Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt citing the “near universal understanding of engagement rings as gifts inherently conditioned on a subsequent marriage”. — Reuters