By David Kumagai, 2L
The 12-person jury stood huddled together in the lobby of Innis College. Jay Gatsby’s fate was in their hands.
Was he or wasn’t he behind the wheel of the car that killed Myrtle Wilson? One of the many things the jury needed to consider was the explosive testimony they had just heard from Gatsby himself.
“She did it!” Gatsby had yelled from the stand, breaking down and pointing at Daisy Buchanan, sitting across from him. “She was driving like a madwoman!” he said, as Buchanan wailed in protest from her seat.
It was a stunning reversal by the defendant, who had spent the earlier parts of his testimony waxing poetic about his love for Buchanan. “I love her with all my heart, and with all yours too,” Gatsby said to his lawyer from the witness box. “As defence counsel, I’m not allowed to have a heart,” his lawyer replied.
The inaugural University of Toronto Literary Moot was a hilarious display of theatre, starring Dean Mayo Moran as Daisy Buchanan, former CBC host Ralph Benmergui as Tom Buchanan, bestselling author Robert Rotenberg as Nick Carraway and Professor Anthony Niblett as Jay Gatsby. The melodrama unfolded before a crowd of roughly 100 people on February 27 at the Innis Town Hall Theatre.
“I love her with all my heart, and with all yours too,” Gatsby said to his lawyer from the witness box. “As defence counsel, I’m not allowed to have a heart,” his lawyer replied.
The mock trial raised approximately $3,000 for “University in the Community”, a program that offers free university-level humanities courses to low-income adults. Law firms Norton Rose Fulbright LLP, Torys LLP and Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP sponsored the event.
Gatsby had been resurrected to answer a charge of negligent driving causing the death of Myrtle Wilson. All four actors took turns on the stand, trading barbs with Christine Kilby, an associate from Norton Rose Fullbright, representing the plaintiff, and Patrick MacDonald, an associate from Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, representing the defendant.
‘Five-star performance’
The inspiration for the event came from the Weldon Literary Moot at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law, which began in 2011, and has held mock trials based on classics such as the Odyssey, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, and Hamlet.
Ben Frenken, a litigation associate at Norton Rose Fullbright, pioneered the Halifax event while he was studying law at Dalhousie. He pitched the idea to the firm’s U of T law summer students Bobby Leung, Matthew Lau, Jonathan Preece and Annie Tayyab last year. “We thought it was a great idea, and we ran with it from there,” Leung said. “We hope the Literary Moot becomes a tradition at the law school.” The four students took the lead organizing the event and were helped by Joanne Mackay-Bennett, who serves as the co-ordinator of the University in the Community program.
Julie Montagna was part of the jury, which was made up of students and organizers of the University in the Community initiative. “It was a stellar, five-star performance,” she said.
Montagna has been a student of the program since 2010, and she raves about her experience. “It’s about excellent professors giving us wonderful insights every lecture,” she said. “I’ve never been late, never missed a class.”
‘Drunken stupors’
The Honourable Justice Douglas B. Maund of the Ontario Court of Justice presided over the mock trial. He set the tone early, tossing out the ordinary rules of procedure, and telling counsel, “if I think your question is boring, I will find it out of order.”
The improv style of the event created many memorable exchanges, in which the absurd questions from counsel elicited amusing answers from the witnesses.
When pressed on her recollection of the fateful night, Buchanan conceded she couldn’t recall who was driving the car that killed Myrtle Wilson because she was in one of her “drunken stupors.”
“Would you agree that you are a thinly-sketched character?” MacDonald later asked Buchanan. She agreed.
When the belligerent Tom Buchanan took the stand, he was grilled about his marital troubles and alleged affair with the deceased. “What’s your wife’s middle name?” he was asked on cross-examination. “Shoshanna. We’ve converted,” he replied, trying to soften his image.
In the end, the jury didn’t take long to reach its verdict. Was the Great Gatsby guilty? Montagna stood up to give the jury’s decision:
“100 per cent innocent!”
Learn more about University in the Community.
Photos: David Kumagai
