Star bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach made a surprise third appearance on the witness stand on Monday in his high-stakes trial with his former employer, Trust Company of the West.

Gundlach was the final witness called before both sides rested their case in advance of closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday.

TCW, a unit of French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA), fired Gundlach in December 2009 and sued him a month later, accusing him of stealing trade secrets, plotting to form a new company using TCW proprietary information and gutting the firm of its entire mortgage-backed securities team.

Gundlach fired back with a counter-lawsuit, alleging his former employer owed him hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and had secretly plotted to fire him while he was still chief investment officer.

In the weeks following his termination, Gundlach went on to form DoubleLine Capital, along with three of his co-defendants in the case. Roughly 45 TCW employees, largely from the mortgage-backed securities group, followed.

Gundlach himself seemed to be surprised to be called to the witness stand on Monday, after arriving in a yellow dress shirt and brown slacks without a coat or tie.

He rushed out of the courtroom when dismissed from the stand after a brief 15 minutes of questioning about consultations with Goldman Sachs on how to negotiate a separation from TCW days before his termination.

The case in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles is Trust Co of the West v. Jeffrey Gundlach et al, BC429385.

Goldman sachs Court California Lawsuit