ONU Mock Trial Team

Last weekend on Feb. 16 and 17, Ohio Northern University's Mock Trial team went to our regional competition at Eastern Michigan State University. My team had been working with this year's case since early Sept. of 2018, with the regional competition being our very last tournament of the season. We won several of our ballots while in Michigan and we also won two individual awards. Kyla Gray, a graduating senior, won an award for best attorney while I won an award for best witness. For this Mock Trial season, we received a civil case about negligence. The case summary, provided by the American Mock Trial Association, was this, "On June 29, 2017, Defendant Danny Kosack was scheduled to appear on the highly-rated show Midlands After Dark with Alex Grace (produced by Plaintiff, Midlands Television Studios, Inc.) with Elias, Kosack's chimpanzee.  But a rehearsal before the show went terribly wrong when Elias attacked the people in the room.  Plaintiff's writer, Chris Villafana, was killed during the attack, and Plaintiff and Defendant have sued each other for negligence."

For the trial, I played as Remy Hollis. Remy was the band manager for the band that was supposed to preform that day on Midlands Television Studios. Remy witnessed the attack as well as some of the events leading up to it. Since Remy was a 'swing witness', either side could call this character to testify. Remy ultimately saw negligence from both Danny Kosack and MTS but, in cases like these, the party that is found to be liable by preponderance of the evidence is found to be guilty. Preponderance of the evidence simply means 'more likely than not'. So, if it is found that Danny Kosack is 51 percent negligent while MTS is 49 percent negligent, then the court must rule in favor of MTS. Since Remy is a swing witness, I played this character on both sides all weekend. Overall, ONU did a good job and placed decently among the teams that were there at the tournament.