Lawyers representing the families of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in a wrongful death lawsuit against the estate of Aaron Hernandez called for the New England Patriots to provide compensation to the families on Tuesday.
According to Travis Anderson of the Boston Globe, attorneys Kenneth Kolpan and William Kennedy made statements calling for the Patriots to compensate the families after a hearing in the case in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday.
“We would welcome the Patriots looking into that issue and doing the right thing, which is to compensate the victims,” said Kolpan, who represents the de Abreu family.
The statements by Koplan and Kennedy piggyback onto another wrongful death lawsuit against Hernandez by Ursula Ward - Odin Lloyd’s mother - whose lawyer implored the Patriots to pay $6 million owed to Hernandez to the family estate so it could be sought by the civil lawsuits.
Lawyers for Hernandez’s estate claim that Massachusetts law prohibits civil suits from seeking punitive damages against a deceased defendant.
Hernandez was found not guilty of murdering de Abreu and Furtado by a jury during a trial in April. His conviction for the murder of Lloyd was then subsequently voided due to an obscure Massachusetts law that granted “abatement ab initio” to Hernandez after he committed suicide on April 19. Since the appeals process had not concluded, the conviction for the murder of Lloyd was nullified.