YESTERDAY was a long day of objections as the high-priced lawyers picked away at everything in a painful tedium of technicality that slowed progress to a crawl in the ATL Pension Fund fraud case underway in the Corporate Area Magistrate’s Court, Half-Way-Tree.

The prosecution team could barely mask their frustration as the battery of defence lawyers — K D Knight, Frank Phipps, John Junor, Valerie Neita-Robertson, and Deborah Martin — created what must have been a record for objections in a single day in that court.

The prosecution is represented by RNA Henriques, Garth McBean and Gayle Nelson, holding a fiat.

The bright spark in those long, dark hours, however, was lit by Resident Magistrate Lorna Shelley-Williams who dispensed justice with a firm hand and a pretty face that held the warring legal gladiators in check.

“One minute please,” rang from the lips of the magistrate throughout the tortuous day-long trial as she pulled the trial back from the brink, with not the proverbial seriousness of a judge but a hint of a smile that disarmed the combatants.

In the case, Patrick Lynch, former chairman of the ATL Pension Fund; Dr Jeffery Pyne, former managing director of Gorstew Limited and Catherine Barber, former administrator of the fund, are accused of conspiring to have more than a billion dollars distributed from the surplus in the pension fund to workers and, in so doing, they allegedly benefited from the distribution, using forged documents to defraud the pension fund.

It is further alleged that the distribution was done without the approval of Gorstew Ltd, the holding company for Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart’s group of companies. The three were arrested after the alleged fraud was discovered in December 2010.

On the stand yesterday was ATL Global Chief Financial Officer David Davies, who was sent out of the courtroom no less than 10 times, while Shelley-Williams pried loose the legal gridlocks that marked the minefield that the trial has become.

Nelson and Henriques were clearly upset at the constant requests by the defence for additional documents to be disclosed, insisting that 99 per cent of them were not relevant to the case “and if we continue at this rate, soon we’ll all be submerged under paper”.

Davies managed to keep his cool and composure, walking in and out of the courtroom with unusual patience, when directed to do so by the magistrate. But the objections intensified after he testified that his boss, Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, would have preferred to increase the benefits from the surplus to ATL pensioners who had worked with him to build a successful empire, but who were now suffering the ravages of inflation.

He earned the ire of defence lawyers who objected to suggestions that money in the value of just over $2 million was credited to the pension account of Lynch. Davies clarified that the surplus amount that went to Lynch increased the value of his pension account by over $2 million.

The defence also became agitated when Davies testified that he had seen four letters on a pension fund file provided by Barber. The letters are among documents that the prosecution is alleging were forged.

Davies will continue to testify this morning.