A $650 million Mercedes-Benz trial got off to a lively start in Melbourne on Tuesday as Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach confronted the German parent company’s lawyer for interrupting opening submissions with allegations that confidential documents had been referenced.

There has been much argy-bargy in the lead-up to the trial over the auto giant’s shift to a fixed-price agency model. The Stuttgart-based parent company of Mercedes-Benz was eager to redact or restrict public visibility to internal documents on its direct-to-consumer strategy that it deemed “super confidential”.