March 18, 2010
Teams from the University of Texas School Of Law swept the
18th Annual Chief Judge Conrad B. Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court
Competition, winning both the oral rounds and the award for Best
Brief. Forty-seven teams from law schools around the country
competed in New York from March 13th – 15th at the nation’s only
moot court competition devoted entirely to bankruptcy.
Last year’s winner, the University of Miami School Of Law, tied for
third place with the Texas Tech University School of Law.
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The competition is sponsored by the St. John’s University School of
Law and the American Bankruptcy Institute and is named for
distinguished St. John’s alumnus and former ABI Director, Chief
Judge Conrad B. Duberstein, who passed away in 2005 at the age of
90.
The ABI Endowment Fund provided prizes of $5,000 to the first place
team, $3,000 to the second place team and $1,000 to the team
winning the Best Brief award. The third place teams each
received $1,500. Nicole Hay, a student at the Southern
Methodist University, Dedman School of Law, won the $1,000 Best
Oral Advocate award.
Click here for a complete list of winners.
Nearly 200 lawyers and judges helped judge the event,
which included eight rounds of arguments. In addition to New
York area Bankruptcy Judges, the ABI brought in a dozen Bankruptcy
Judges from around the nation to judge the advanced rounds.
The final round was held at the Conrad Duberstein United States
Bankruptcy Courthouse in Brooklyn. The final round was judged
by a panel of distinguished federal jurists that included: Hon. R.
Guy Cole, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; Hon. Steven
M. Colloton, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; Hon. A.
Wallace Tashima, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Hon.
Gerald Bard Tjoflat, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
Circuit; Hon. Stuart M. Bernstein, Chief Judge of the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court, S.D.N.Y.; and Hon. Carla E. Craig, Chief Judge of
the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, E.D.N.Y.
Each year, the competition problem focuses on two sophisticated
cutting edge issues of bankruptcy law. Past competitions
addressed environmental clean up costs, channeling injunctions in
mass tort cases, state sovereign immunity, the constitutionality of
the bankruptcy courts, religious entity bankruptcies, and the
constitutionality of speech restrictions imposed on consumer
bankruptcy attorneys, to name just a few of the problem
topics.
This year’s problem was pulled from the headlines. It is
based on a failed Ponzi investment scheme, with the names of the
parties drawn from the 1850’s Dicken’s novel Little
Dorrit, one of the earliest depictions of such a scheme in
English literature. The problem raises two timely and
important issues of bankruptcy practice. The first issue is
one likely to arise in many of the currently pending Ponzi scheme
bankruptcies -- whether a sophisticated investor who becomes
suspicious and withdraws funds is denied the protection provided to
good-faith transferees. The second issue is whether a
bankruptcy trustee can waive an individual debtor’s attorney client
privilege. The fact pattern can be accessed at http://www.abiworld.org/moot10/
or www.stjohns.edu/law/bankruptcy.
The event culminated with the gala awards banquet at Pier 60,
Chelsea Piers, in Manhattan. More than 1,000 persons, including
many of the leading New York bankruptcy judges and practitioners,
attended the event. The evening’s program included the
presentation of an award to Hon. Burton R. Lifland in recognition
of his 30 years of distinguished service on the U.S. Bankruptcy
Court for the Southern District of New York.
Information about next year’s events will be posted at www.stjohns.edu/law/bankruptcy.