Judge warns Ralec QC his patience is waning as trial may blow out to 10 weeks

The court battle between NZX and Ralec may stretch to an extra week and a half, taking the whole trial to more than 10 weeks, with the judge querying one lawyer's style of cross-examination.

After the fourth witness, former NZX chief executive Mark Weldon finished being cross-examined for today, lawyers from both sides presented Justice Robert Dobson with a revised calendar for the remainder of the trial. It was initially set down for nine weeks, having begun the third week yesterday but today the court was told the remaining 40 witnesses to come – 12 from NZX and 28 from Ralec – would not fit within that time period.

NZX, which is suing for  $A20.7-37.6 million, claims Clear's former owners, Grant Thomas and Dominic Pym, and their companies Ralec Commodities and Ralec Interactive misled NZX when it bought the commodities trading platform with "wildly inaccurate" forecasts. Ralec subsequently filed a counterclaim against NZX, later adding Mr Weldon to the list of defendants. It claims NZX, which bought the platform for A$7 million with the potential for further earnouts, failed to fund the exchange sufficiently. The case pre-dates much of NZX's existing management, having first hit the courts in 2011.

Much of the day was taken up by the beginning of Mr Weldon's cross-examination, after the market operator's former chief executive finished reading his brief this morning. Weldon's QC, Alan Galbraith, noted that the court was "still on July of 2009," in reference to the internal documents Mr Weldon was cross-examined on after lunch which were drafts pre-dating the acquisition in October 2009.

Justice Dobson is now considering whether to extend the trial by another seven days, with the lawyers also presenting options including the prospect of some witnesses not reading out their briefs in entirety. Ralec also said that if the evidence was not concluded within the original nine-week timeframe, the lawyers would make changes to the order of their witnesses and that some of their witnesses may not be needed depending on the outcome from cross-examining NZX's witnesses.

"It doesn't make for pretty reading, does it," Justice Dobson said of the revised timetable, which would see NZX's witnesses finished by June 3. "We are really looking at another seven days, assuming most of the subpoenaed witnesses are relatively short."

The judge told Ralec's QC, Tim North, that he had been reluctant to intervene in his questioning but that some of Mr North's examining of both Weldon and Andrew Harmos, an earlier witness, had left him "wondering if there was any utility in your pressing the point further" and he questioned whether some of the time Mr North had taken was justified.

"You'll have to forgive me if I appear to get a little bit less patient from now on," Justice Dobson said.

(BusinessDesk)