When the judges returned to the Gross Appellate Courtroom to render their decision, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen admitted how difficult it was for her and her colleagues to determine a winner.

“We could have used a fishbowl,” Christensen said. “We honestly could have used a fishbowl, and all of us, I know for a fact, would have been perfectly fine with whatever name we drew out of there.”

Christensen, flanked by Douglas County District Court judges Horacio Wheelock and Tressa Alioth, was speaking to the final two teams in the Creighton University School of Law’s annual moot court competition.

The moot court competition is a mandatory part of students’ third semester legal writing studies. It requires research, brief writing and oral argument, demanding that students be prepared to formulate arguments from both sides of a fictional case and express themselves in front of three judges. Over the course of a week, 64 teams are winnowed down to two.

Creighton Law is unique among law schools in that participating in the moot court competition is built into the curriculum. Law students, regardless of what type of law they want to practice, even if they will never find themselves making an oral argument in an appellate court.

“As students progress through their legal writing classes, they are being prepared to draft this kind of an appellate brief,” said Samantha Blixt, president of the 2021 Moot Court Board. “This is really the culmination of all of the legal research and writing experience they had in their first year. It’s valuable experience, especially for those who want to practice in this type of appellate setting, but being able to take everything that you’ve researched, that you’ve learned, and being able to verbally communicate your case, that is going to be valuable to them in any area of practice.”

The case this year — Bridger Inc. v. Simone Base dba Feather Ink — was about whether a former employee of a company that created a dating app had violated trademark and trade secret laws when creating her own matchmaking app.

Bridger sued Base in U.S. District Court, alleging trademark dilution and trade secret misappropriation: the logo Base created for her app is similar to Bridger’s logo, and Base used a portion of Bridger’s customer list to contact people about her new venture.

The district court granted Bridger’s motion for summary judgement on the trademark dilution claim and enjoined Base from using the logo she had created for Feather Ink, but the court also granted Base’s motion for summary judgement on the trade secret claim regarding the Bridger customer list and dismissed that claim.

Second year Creighton law students Kate Hughes and Mckenzie Meradith represented the appellee, Bridger, while 2Ls Mary Mead and Aubrey Wells represented the appellant, Base.

During their arguments, Christensen, herself an appellate court judge, and to a lesser extent Wheelock and Alioth, both trial court judges, hurled questions at each of the students, forcing them to think on their feet and defend their arguments.

Before rendering the judges’ decision, Christensen noted that judges are not required to pick a winner at the University of Iowa’s moot court competition.

“So, we think it’s really unfair that you put us in this spot,” Christensen said.

Forced to come to a decision, the court ruled in favor of the appellee, Hughes and Meradith.

“We’re not supposed to (judge) on the facts, we’re supposed to do it on presentation, but on presentation it truly is a coin toss,” Christensen said. “So, then we moved on to the facts of the case and which case was stronger, and we thought probably the Bridger case was the stronger case.”

In another difficult decision for the judges, Hughes was named outstanding oralist.

In earlier decisions, Justin Pritchett won best brief, while Meradith and Megan Miranda were best brief runners-up.

Third year law students Hannah Knox Jensen and Olivia Zeman-Renner were this year’s problem directors, creating, researching and writing the case that the 2Ls argued. Usually, the problem directors have their experience from the previous year’s competition to draw from in crafting the case, but last year’s competition was held virtually due to the COVID-10 pandemic.

“Our 1L year, we both served as bailiffs,” Zeman-Renner said. “We sat in the courtroom and helped keep time so we could essentially get an inside look at what we would be doing next year, and then it ended up being completely and totally different than what we expected.”

When it came time to plan this year’s competition, the 3Ls basically started from scratch.

“This year we had no idea what we were working with, and we are proud to say that we made it to tonight,” Blixt said.

The problem directors began researching trademark law in April. They needed to find two issues that would work together in one case. With some assistance from Creighton Law Assistant Dean Craig Dallon and Director Carol Knoepfler, they decided on trademark dilution and trade secret misappropriation.

“Every fact that you see in the record we had to come up with,” Zeman-Renner said. “And it was very funny because during the process of working with the professors, we had to argue why we thought this factor, this certain thing in the record would work for the case.”

Despite being the architects of the case, Jensen and Zeman-Renner were caught off guard by some of the arguments the final teams made.

“I know there were certain things brought up in the argument that I had never thought of,” Zeman-Renner said. “It was really interesting to see how they spin that.”

The 2021 moot court competition was sponsored by McGrath North Mullin & Kratz PC LLO, and the contest also was supported by first year law students who served as bailiffs, as well as Creighton Law faculty and staff.