BOSTON — A judge called in all the attorneys involved in the wrongful death suit against Karen Read to scold them over leaked impounded information on former State Police Trooper Michael Proctor.

Plymouth County Superior Court Judge Mark Gildea held a hearing Wednesday afternoon and ordered all the lawyers involved to submit certifications about whether they disseminated the information, or had knowledge of it being disseminated to anyone not party to the case.

None of the lawyers copped to leaking the info, which Gildea said contained Proctor’s “sensitive and private medical information.” Proctor, who is not a party to the case, provided the information in an attempt to delay a deposition for the case.

About half an hour after some of the information was submitted to the court and the other attorneys, it was published on X.

Someone had violated the impoundment order “directly, or at the very least, in spirit,” Gildea said.

“The malicious publication of private information concerns me,” the judge told all the lawyers, who filled out the counsels’ seating and the jury box.

“Whatever opinion that one may have about a non-party, even warranted, such an opinion does not allow for the disparate treatment of such individual,” Gildea said. “All people deserve fair and equal treatment in our system of justice, regardless of any personal characteristic, as abhorrent as some of them may be.”

A day before Proctor had requested a delay in his deposition, Read had filed a lawsuit against the Mass State Police and Canton Police Department that cited a series of bigoted and crude messages Proctor sent from his personal device.

Those messages will also be included in the wrongful death case against Read, who’s being sued by her late boyfriend Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s family. Read was tried twice and acquitted last year of second-degree murder in O’Keefe’s death. He died after being found severely injured outside a Canton home during a blizzard in January 2022.

Proctor was the lead investigator on Read’s case, but he was fired from the MSP after crude and offensive messages he sent about Read were found on his phone.

The criminal case against Read became a phenomenon that’s carried into all the civil litigation she’s currently involved in. Spectators packed the otherwise quiet Plymouth courthouse to watch the proceedings.

Gildea noted that high-profile cases now play out in “two arenas: one governed by procedure and precedent and the other by pixels, edits, and algorithm.”

“The courtroom has become content,” he continued, “and the law has become a spectacle.”

Gildea asked that the lawyers in the case form an agreement that they will not share private, personal information they receive in discovery, or they will be held in contempt and potentially sanctioned with dismissal or default.

The judge said he wanted assurances the information would be used for justice and not weaponized for “pettiness and profit.”

Otherwise, he said he could enter his own order to control and oversee discovery.

He encouraged the attorneys to also examine the rules of professional conduct, particularly those regarding publicity, which he said balance the interests of the public in the proceedings with the need to hold fair and just processes.

“However, I am not so sure churning the waters to generate social media coverage necessarily can result in legitimate interest in the conduct of judicial proceedings,” he said. “Read the rule, especially if you have not done so, adhere to it, or be ready to face the consequences for failing to do so.”

After giving a 10-minute lecture, Gildea wished everyone a happy Fourth of July weekend and left the bench.

“No opportunity to be heard?” Read’s attorney Alan Jackson asked the clerk, requesting that he “let the judge know we would absolutely like to be heard.”

The clerk went to ask the judge and returned quickly to say, “No.”

Outside the courtroom, Jackson and attorneys for the O’Keefe family declined to comment on the hearing.

The proceedings were continued until July 10 at 2 p.m.

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