by Damien Alarcon
Editor in Chief
The Moot Court team of the San Fernando Valley College of Law a branch of the University of La Verne, took second place overall in the 31st annual Roger J. Traynor California Moot Court Competition, a prestigious contest featuring most of the law schools in the state on April 1-2.
The competition was hosted by the UCLA School of Law.
The team consisted of second-year law students Vahe Hovanessian of Burbank and Kevin McConnell of Pacific Palasades. They were coached by Professor David Glassman. This is the first competition that the two have participated in.
“We were just hoping to gain some experience,” said McConnell. “We did not expect to win anything.”
The San Fernando Valley College squad was the only team that had two members.
Other participating schools consisted of three people. The contest had 18 schools present.
The team outscored such highly respected institutions as UCLA, Pepperdine, UC Davis, the University of San Diego and Whittier College, among others.
The team also defeated the Empire College School of Law, who came out as the first-place winner. SFV outscored them in the first round of oral arguments. Empire College was able to outscore the ULV campus in the overall tournament scoring.
Both Empire College and the SFV branch of ULV are non-American Bar Association (ABA) accredited schools.
Judging of Saturday’s rounds were performed by Justices Orville Armstrong, Paul Coffee, Gary Hastings, Charles Vogel, Miriam Vogel and Fred Woods. For the final round, which was held the second day, Justices Mildred Lillie, John Arguelles and Armand Arabian had the judging duties. Scoring was based on the combination of written brief and oral argument phases of the competition.
Roger J. Traynor (1900-1983) served as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court from 1940 until 1964 and as the chief justice of California from 1964 to 1970.
He received the highest award of the ABA, the ABA medal “for conspicuous service to the course of American Jurisprudence.”
He also has received numerous awards from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Trial Lawyers Association, the Virginia State Bar Association and the University of California.
This particular moot court competition is a nationally recognized appellate contest. It was developed by the Young Lawyers Association of the state bar of California nearly 30 years ago.
“We are very flattered that the University of La Verne and the San Fernando Valley Campus gave us the opportunity to make this happen,” said Hovanessian. “We would like to send our thanks to Professor Glassman for his guidance and direction.”
“The results far exceeded our expectations,” said McConnell. “We look forward to competitions in the future.”
