Contact: Rali Mileva    
                (703) 739-0800
                rmileva@abiworld.org

                  University of Connecticut   Law School Wins ABI Moot Court

March 31, 2005, Alexandria, Va. — The University of Connecticut School of Law won the Thirteenth Annual Judge Conrad B. Duberstein Moot Court competition, defeating a team from the University of Houston Law School in the final round. Almost 40 teams, a record number, competed in New York from March 12-14 at the nation’s only moot court competition devoted entirely to bankruptcy. The competition is jointly sponsored by American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) and St. John’s University School of Law, and is named for St. John’s alumnus and former ABI Director Chief Judge Conrad B. Duberstein.

The ABI Endowment Fund provided the first-place winners with $5,000 and the second-place team with a $3,000 prize. Emory University and Hofstra University each received $1,500 for their third-place tie. The Emory team also won for the Best Brief. Zachary Annable, a student at the University of Alabama, earned recognition as Best Oralist.

“This year’s competition was fabulous,” said Prof. G. Ray Warner, director of the LL.M. in Bankruptcy Program at St. John’s and a former ABI Robert M. Zinman Resident Scholar. “The competitors were the best ever. We were pleased to see teams from schools that had not previously participated in the Duberstein competition.”

About 150 bankruptcy lawyers and judges helped judge the event, which included eight rounds of arguments. The final-round judges were Hon. Michael W. McConnell (10th Cir.), Hon. Michael J. Melloy (8th Cir.) and Hon. Diarmuid O’Scannlain (9th Cir.), and Chief Bankruptcy Judges Hon. Conrad B. Duberstein (E.D.N.Y.), Hon. Stephen D. Gerling (N.D.N.Y.) and Hon. Rosemary Gambardella (D. N.J.).

Copies of the problem and the competitor briefs are available at www.law.stjohns.edu/bankruptcy/. 

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ABI is the largest multi-disciplinary, non-partisan organization dedicated to research and education on matters related to insolvency.  ABI was founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues.  The ABI membership includes over 10,600 attorneys, accountants, bankers, judges, professors, lenders, turnaround specialists and other bankruptcy professionals providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information.  For additional information on ABI, visit ABI World at http://www.abiworld.org.  For additional conference information, visit http://www.abiworld.org/events/newevents.html.