A defense attorney for Michelle Carter said Friday evening that the family of Conrad Roy should have taken out a life insurance policy if they wanted financial compensation for his suicide, in his first public comments about the $4.2 million wrongful death suit filed against her by Roy's mother.

"It's a massive stretch there," attorney Joseph Cataldo said in a brief interview Friday evening. "I don't think somebody should profit from their own suicide."

Responding to Cataldo's comment, Eric Goldman, an attorney for Conrad's mother Lynn said, "Mr. Cataldo's comment is callous and in my opinion unprofessional."

Carter was convicted in June of manslaughter, with a Taunton juvenile court judge ruling that she was responsible for Roy's suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. Carter was sentenced to a 15-month jail term Thursday, with the sentence delayed until state courts can rule on appeals in the case.

After years of a largely text-based relationship in which Roy and Carter discussed their struggles with mental illness, Carter began encouraging Roy to follow through on plans to kill himself, culminating in a phone call in which she told Roy to get back in his gas-filled truck as he had second thoughts about ending his life.

Prosecutors at the trial portrayed Carter as a manipulator who deliberately pushed Roy into suicide to gain sympathy and attention from her peers, pointing to deceptive statements she made after his death and her desire to take public credit for a charity baseball game she organized in his memory.

But Cataldo maintained throughout the case that Carter committed no crime, describing Roy's death as a suicide rather than a homicide. He argued in court that Carter, who battled depression and eating disorders, was overwhelmed by Roy's repeated expressions of desire to kill himself, and said that his death was the "tragic" ending of a relationship between two troubled teenagers.

In the wrongful death suit, which was filed on July 6 but first reported on Friday morning, Conrad's mother Lynn Roy asks for $4.2 million in damages from future wages lost due to her son's death.

And, contrary to Cataldo's criticism of the suit as an attempt to "profit" off of her son's suicide, a lawyer for Lynn Roy said this morning that the goal of the suit is to create a fund or scholarship in Conrad's memory.

"The family would obviously rather have their son back," attorney Eric Goldman said. "What the Roys are looking to do is somehow memorialize Conrad."

Carters' negligence and reckless conduct caused Roy to sustain "severe personal injuries, great conscious pain and suffering of body and mind and ultimately death," the suit alleges.

Cataldo declined to comment about his legal strategy against the civil suit. He said in court Thursday he plans to appeal Carter's criminal conviction, based in part on the argument that her statements to Roy were constitutionally protected speech.

ABC's "20/20" will air an hour-long program on the Carter case Friday at 10 p.m. featuring MassLive reporter Dan Glaun who has been covering the case closely for the past two years.