Court: Man Who Broke Engagement Gets $70K Ring Back

A Massachusetts woman is out of luck, and a $70,000 ring from her broken engagement, after the state's high court ruled in her ex-fiance's favor. The Washington Post reports that on Friday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided Caroline Settino has to give back the piece of jewelry to Bruce Johnson, ruling that going forward, a broken engagement means the engagement ring must be returned to the buyer, no matter who's behind the breakup. More:

• History: Settino and Johnson started dating in 2016, and Johnson lavished his girlfriend with trips abroad, clothes, and jewelry, among other gifts. He proposed in the summer of 2017 with the diamond ring in question. However, by the fall of 2017, things between the two had crumbled, and by the end of the year, Johnson broke things off, per the court ruling.

• Settino's take: The woman said in court that her "life imploded" after Johnson called off the wedding, and in 2021, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge ruled that because Johnson ended things, Settino was entitled to keep the ring.
• Johnson's take: Johnson says Settino verbally abused him, and alleges she wouldn't go with him to medical appointments after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
• More upset: Johnson also said he discovered a message on Settino's phone to a man he was unfamiliar with, per the AP. "My Bruce is going to be in Connecticut for three days. I need some playtime," the message reportedly read. Johnson alleges he also found voicemails from the same man calling Settino "cupcake." Settino claimed the man is simply a friend, but an appeals court in 2023 overturned the original court's ruling and ordered Settino to return the ring.

• Precedent: The Massachusetts high court had to revisit a similar case from 1959, when it decided that the buyer of an engagement ring could ask for it back only if they were "without fault" in the breakup. Stephanie Taverna-Siden, an attorney for Johnson, said in September oral arguments that the ring had been a "conditional gift" that could only be kept if an actual marriage took place, per the Post. Nicholas Rosenberg, an attorney for Settino, shot back, "There is no such thing as ... 'It's yours for now, but then I'm going to bring action to take it back.'"
• Ruling: "We ... retire the concept of fault in this context," the high court wrote. "The engagement ring must be returned to the donor regardless of fault."

(More engagement ring stories.)