Supreme Court Showcase Recap

By Max Mason

The Supreme Court Program at KYA has teams of two from each school compete on either side of past court cases. Today, December 8th, 2020, the final round of oral arguments commenced. The appellee, represented by Lauren Heibert(Meade County) and Mary Dudgeon(South Oldham) is defending Maime Baytos, while the appellant, represented by Tucker Payne (Oldham County) and Tala Saad(KCD) is defending Family Dollar. With 15 minutes to split between two advocates, each team shares their side of the case. As a prerequisite to the case, Steven Baytos was a worker at Family Dollar, was injured, and took worker’s compensation. Further along in his recovery, Baytos suffered further injuries, specifically a tear in his thoracic aorta, which eventually caused his death. After death followed the injury, Steven’s wife, Maime, wanted to reopen the case to get justice for her husband’s death as a substituted party to her husband’s case.

Starting the case was the appellant, Payne and Saad, reserving five minutes for a rebuttal after their opponents, the appellee, gave their argument. Both Payne and Saad had reserved five minutes for their personal arguments. Following the appellant, the appellee, Heibert and Dudgeon, reserved seven and a half minutes for their individual arguments. The appellant believes that the case should not have been opened, due to the fact that Baytos filled paperwork to close the case. On the other hand, the appellee wanted to reopen the case to give Maime Baytos the money she believed she deserved. Concluding the arguments, the appellant had five minutes remaining to rebuttal the appellee’s arguments. Concluding the case, the side with the more profound argument, being the appellee, won the case, consisting of councilmen Heibert and Dudgeon.

In the words of Chief Justice Will VonHandorf, “The court has unanimously decided to protect the right widows in Kentucky by siding with the appellee mamie bastos”