"The Beard Grows, But The Head Does Not Grow Wiser."
"Lawyers work hard and, like us, they're human, many of them."-Dick Cavett
“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.” - H. L. Mencken
"I tell you, I'll consult my lawyer. And if he advises me to do it, I'll get a new lawyer."-Groucho Marx 
"We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can."
"Look at all my trials and tribulations
Sinking in a gentle pool of wine (I wish,ed.)
Don't disturb me now....."
CC's Plaintiff Attorney Team
The lines above are taken from "The Last Supper", a song from Jesus Christ Superstar. An appropriate opening to this piece. Firstly, Good Friday is this week. Second, this first Rock Opera came out when I was in high school at Detroit Catholic Central. And, most importantly, the lyrics are a spot on summary of my state after the twelve hour Mock Trial regional on February 26, 2022, wherein I coached that same Catholic Central high school's Mock Trial team.
The Michigan Mock Trial competition is sponsored each year by the very noble non-profit , The Michigan Center for Civic Education, and its director, Ellen Zwarensteyn. They do a great job. I first became involved with Mock Trial as a judge in 2012. At that time, the Center for Civic Education had just lost its federal funding amid a round of other cutbacks. The lost $250,000 yearly allocation has still not been completely replaced from other sources. Knowing that history adds to my admiration for what the Center continues to do.
Briefly, Mock Trial is a competition, where high school students will try a case, based on a set of facts, pleadings, statements and exhibits released in November each year. A team is a minimum of 6-3 lawyers and 3 witnesses. Teams are required to litigate both sides of a case. No jury per se. Trials are scored by a panel of 3 judges. The competition's first round is a regional of 3 trials in one day. This is a highly abbreviated description.
Teams are coached by teachers and/or volunteer attorneys. It is a big time commitment for a practicing lawyer. I was an assistant coach back in 2015, but I had to drop out until this year because of my work schedule. Coaching Mock Trial was near the top of my post litigation career list of things to do. And, ironically, coaching the young CC lads would get me back into a courtroom, a rare occurrence since the March 2020 Covid court shutdown.
Covid had hit the Mock Trial program as well. The March 2020 shutdown order came in the middle of regional competition season, and the remainder of the regionals and state finals were cancelled. The 2021 season was totally virtual. There were many reasons for that arrangement, one of the foremost being that all the courthouses that hosted the trials continued to be closed to the public. The 2022 season was to include live proceedings as an option, and that certainly would have been my preference. The Omicron variant put an end to that.
Although Catholic Central High School has a great tradition of attorney and judicial alumni, it has been historically difficult to get attorney coaches for the team. It is a big commitment. Last year the team was coached by a CC teacher, who had left at the end of the school year. There had not been a lawyer coach in several years and during at least one of those years, CC did not field a team.
In 2021-22, I had more time. And Bryan Kontry, a 2001 CC alum, took time from his full time practice and young family to help coach the team. We had 4 veterans. We also had 6 freshmen. We had no faculty moderator. As the late, great Jack Benny said in similar circumstances: Yipe!
The "Vets"
The "Frosh"-minus 1.
It was extremely distressing, and ironic to find myself in charge of technology for the team's virtual proceedings. I had taken the first computer class offered at CC, but the school's only terminal was inside a couple of wood paneled walls thrown up in a corner
of the third floor east stairwell. And our programs were written on to paper tapes, shown here.
I lost sleep the week in the run up to the competition, worrying about such things as re-naming conventions for 6 team members for each of 3 trials. Our attorneys and our own witnesses could not be in the same room because of reverb issues. And on and on. Not my idea of things that made for a live court adrenaline rush.
I had been on many Zoom conferences, and had hosted my share, but nothing like this. If my Zoom conferences go "Poof", I pick up a phone and move on. Here, I could screw up the competition for these kids, for reasons having nothing to do with the law or the facts. As I told them, I had hoped to have the team show up in an Oakland County courtroom, and let it rip-pace the courtroom, shake a fist at opposing witnesses, opposing counsel and the judges (not really). It does take away a bit of the thrill when you are acting as an advocate while seated at a high school classroom desk with a laptop screen 12 inches from your face. The tech details turned out to be more than half the effort and less than half the fun-a lot less.
Our civil case involved a claim of negligence against a smart phone manufacturer, Orange Inc., for damages caused by the alledged negligent design of its new MePhone. One of the defense witnesses was the CEO of Orange, with the last name Works. The smarter ones among us were able to sense the subtle parallels to a real life, company, product and CEO.
Beginning shortly after the release of the case in November 2021, we started work.
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