Star bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach departed the witness stand on Wednesday after four days of testimony in the high stakes trial with his former employer, Trust Company of the West.

Gundlach denied in court that he requested his co-workers gather "anything we might need" from TCW, countering testimony earlier in the trial from Gundlach's co-defendant, Cris Santa Ana.

Gundlach's lengthy stint on the stand had drawn words of caution from the judge that were directed to both sides.

"You're boring the jury to death," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl West admonished lawyers on Tuesday afternoon after Gundlach had been on the stand for three days.

Gundlach and TCW are locked in a trial that has given a rare glimpse into the inner workings of investment firms and the big personalities who run them.

TCW 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.

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.

Santa Ana, a member of the Gundlach's mortgage-backed securities group at TCW, is now chief risk officer at DoubleLine.

"Jeffrey asked for contacts, contracts, board of director contacts, copies of the red books which had the trade orders, holdings," Santa Ana testified last week. "And I think he made a blanket statement, something to the effect, 'and anything else you might think we would need.'"

But on Wednesday Gundlach told jurors that "we didn't copy any TCW code or systems to the best of my knowledge."

At another point on Wednesday, Gundlach told TCW attorney John Quinn that, "with respect, you don't know what you're talking about," as Quinn drew a diagram of how mortgage-backed securities work on a display board for the jury.

TCW is a unit of French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA).

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

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