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Here's how they explained it:

Godfrey Smith, Attorney
"There were two applications today; one by Dean Boyce and the Trustees of the BTL Employees Trust to cross examine Joseph Waight and there was an application by the government, the Attorney General and the Minister of Public Utilities to cross examine Dean Boyce. The reason for that was that Dean Boyce and the BTL Employees Trust had made an application for injunctions concerning dividends to be paid at the next AGM. You will recall that the Caribbean Court of Justice had ordered a deferral of that issue until December 14th - but only until December 14th, so the issue could arise again hence we came to this court for this court of appeal to decide on the matter of the injunctions."

"It is within those applications that these applications were made to cross examine. However as you were able to follow, at the end of the day both sides agree to withdraw the applications to cross examine."

Denys Barrow, Attorney for Government
"What took place is that Mr. Boyce drew conclusions - the documents did not draw any conclusions and as you would expect the conclusions that Mr. Boyce drew are those which suited his purpose. Mr. Boyce has no obligation to be fair or impartial or neutral in what he says, so he said it the way he wanted the court to buy it and I had intended to get him to clarify that what he was saying must not be accepted as any statement of fact but rather as a statement of his opinion. Mr. Smith very properly clarified to the court that Mr. Boyce was not making any statements or fact and once that was established and stated clearly before the court then I was very happy with it and very pleased with the outcome."

Daniel Ortiz
"At the end of the day the court of appeal has made certain statements to the effect that they are over worked and that these cases - it's a low that this current sitting and they have been force to sit through an appeal hearing this afternoon which ultimately could have been avoided. How do you defend against that?"

Denys Barrow, Attorney for Government
"This afternoon's hearing is not one that could have been avoided. I think you should look at it this other way which is that Mr. Smith and I together had I think the quickness of response of appreciation of our respected positions so that we were able to shorten what could have been a much longer application process."

Godfrey Smith, Attorney
"I am afraid that's the nature of litigation; there is no way around that."

Those applications were heard this afternoon, but this morning Dunkeld International Limited, another Aschroft-Allied company got its opportunity to present its appeal of a decision handed down by Justice Samuel Awich, when he was a Supreme Court Judge.

He granted an injunction which restrained this company from taking arbitration of the BTL acquisitions to the international courts. They wanted the court to hear their application today, but attorney for GOB, Denys Barrow, made an application to discontinue it on the grounds that the attorney for Dunkeld International, QC Nigel Pleming, served him with the documents 3 days ago, which prevented him from preparing an adequate defence.

Here's how he explained it outside of court:

Denys Barrow, Attorney for Government
"Dunkled served written submissions upon me on Monday morning - 77 pages of submissions - 55 cases and extracts for a hearing which was to have been conducted today. The rule requires a skeleton argument which should not be long-winded submissions should be served 14 days before the day set for the sitting for the court of appeal to commence. They served it 3 days before the actual hearing. My protest was that that was unfair, it was unjust, it does not give the government sufficient time to prepare its own case."

The court decided that this application will be decided purely on written submissions from both sides, without any oral arguments. This sitting of the Court of Appeal ends tomorrow, where they will hand decisions down for cases they heard in the last sitting.