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Massachusetts’ highest court reversed a longstanding ruling, saying an engagement ring must be returned if the wedding falls through. 

After a year of dating that included trips to the US Virgin Islands and Italy, Bruce Johnson bought Caroline Settino a US$70,000 ($117,000) diamond engagement ring from Tiffany & Co. 

Johnson proposed during a dinner in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2017. When Settino agreed, other diners at the restaurant applauded. 

The next year, Johnson sued Settino, claiming he was the rightful owner of the engagement ring. 

Johnson broke up with Settino before they were married, and his lawsuit forced Massachusetts’ highest court to reconsider a 65-year-old ruling saying someone can retrieve the engagement ring they gave their partner only if they weren’t at “fault” for the breakup. 

Johnson last week learned he would reclaim the ring after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that, from now on, an engagement ring must be returned to the buyer if the wedding falls through, regardless of who is at fault. 

“They moved the law in Massachusetts in the right direction,” Johnson’s lawyer Stephanie Taverna Siden told the Washington Post. “And our client felt justified in getting the ring back and having the law in Massachusetts be developed so that, hopefully, no other parties will have to fight over this.” 

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion said determining who was at fault for a breakup was difficult and “at odds with a principal purpose of an engagement period to test the permanency of the couple’s wish to marry”. 

It added engagement rings were “gifts inherently conditioned on a subsequent marriage”. 

Settino’s lawyer Nicholas Rosenberg said “the idea of an engagement ring as a conditional gift is predicated on outdated notions”. 

“I am disappointed with the retention of the societal presumption that a ring is given conditionally and not fully vested unless the recipient completes the promise of marriage.” 

After Johnson began dating Settino in 2016, he took her on trips and bought her jewellery, handbags and shoes, according to the court opinion. In August 2017, Johnson asked Settino’s father for permission to marry her, and Johnson proposed shortly after. The couple planned their wedding for September 2018. 

But later in 2017, Johnson alleged, Settino had become “critical and unsupportive of him”, according to the court. Settino called him a moron, yelled at him, and didn’t accompany him to medical appointments when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, Johnson claimed. 

Near the end of the year, Johnson ended the engagement, according to the opinion. He sued Settino the next year in hopes of retrieving the engagement ring. 

Settino, a teacher, said in court her “life imploded” after Johnson called off the wedding. 

“I had 60 people from my school coming to the wedding,” she said. “We were putting them all up for two days at the resort.” 

A Superior Court judge in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, ruled in 2021 that Johnson was responsible for terminating the engagement and was therefore at fault, so Settino could keep the ring. But an appeals court reversed that decision in September 2023, saying Johnson wasn’t at fault because his decision to end the engagement was reasonable. 

The case went to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which had not reconsidered the legal standard for failed engagement gifts since 1959, when a similar case involved a couple debating who should keep a ring after the relationship ended. At the time, the court decided the buyer could retrieve the gifts only if they were “without fault”. 

In oral arguments in September, Taverna Siden said the ring was a “conditional gift” based on the marriage happening and pushed for the law to change. 

Rosenberg said during the arguments an engagement ring could not be a conditional gift. 

“You’re transferring title of property ownership, and the ring is either yours or it’s mine. There is no such thing as this, ‘It’s yours for now but then I’m going to bring action to take it back’.” 

Justice Scott Kafker said during the hearing that the 1959 ruling “seems old-fashioned”. 

The court’s opinion reflected that thought while siding with Taverna Siden’s arguments, potentially ending a legal dispute that lasted more than four years longer than Johnson and Settino’s relationship. 

Kyle Melnick, Washington Post