2023 Solomon Greenberg participants left to right: Thomas Mooney, Noah Scatliff, Genevieve Smith, Tyson Priebe, Melinda Moch, Dominique Gibson (standing).
Moot News 2023: Solomon Greenberg Moot sets the scene for advocacy series
Winners will represent Manitoba across Canada
The annual Solomon Greenberg Moot took place on Grey Cup Sunday, November 19, 2023 at the Winnipeg Law Courts. Participating students were third-year law students Melinda Moch, Noah Scatliff, Genevieve Smith, Dominique Gibson, Thomas Mooney, and Tyson Priebe. The judges noted the participants did an incredible job and that they did not have an easy task deciding on the winners.
Decide they did, however, and Tyson Priebe was declared the winner with runner-up Noah Scatliff. The two will represent Robson Hall in the Western Canada Trial Moot (aka the MacIntyre Cup), which will be hosted early in 2024 by the University of Alberta. Finalists from that competition will proceed to the national trial moot, the Sopinka Cup, typically held in Ottawa.
Robson Hall’s in-house trial moot has a long and illustrious history at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law, reaching back nearly 60 years, with winners including students who have gone on to become Court of Queen’s Bench Judges, Ministers of Justice and even former Dean of Law, and Chancellor of the University of Manitoba – in the example of Harvey Sector, C.M., O.M. [BComm/1967, LLB/1992, LLD/2022].
The Solomon Greenberg Moot was named for a well-respected Winnipeg lawyer who was considered one of the best criminal defence lawyers in Western Canada. Greenberg was born in Odessa, Russia in 1894, immigrated with his family to Canada in 1911, and registered at the Manitoba Law school after graduating from St. John’s High School in 1915. Greenberg was thought of as legendary in the legal community, and was a hero to his clients who were mostly of modest means. He died of a heart attack in 1958 while running a trial, and in 1964, his widow made a donation to the Faculty of Law to provide a prize for the student judged to be the best presenter in the annual Solomon Greenberg Moot Court Competition. The Manitoba Bar Association later contributed more funds to also support a prize for the competition’s first-runner up. More information about Greenberg’s life can be found in Norm Larsen’s book Notable People from Manitoba’s Legal History at page 133.
Director of Clinics, Elizabeth McCandless said, “We are very grateful to our volunteers – we couldn’t run the trial without Judge Tim Killeen, Judge Raymond Wyant, Judge Kusham Sharma, and Judge David Ireland. The students were supported by lawyer coaches who devoted their time leading up to the trial: Adam Gingera and Dayna Queau-Guzzi for the Crown; Evan Roitenberg and Laura Robinson for the Defence.”
Read more about past winners of the Solomon Greenberg Moot.