The first day of hearings in the exception fees test case brought against ANZ got off to a tense start as barristers and the judge sparred over the admissibility of six affidavits from senior ANZ executives that explained the detail of many of the bank's practices. One affidavit covered material the bank feared could be misused to perpetrate credit card fraud.Justice Michelle Gordon initially wanted to leave the affidavits out as they did not appear to directly address the plaintiffs' claims in relation to 17 different fees."There seems to be a large number of materials in the court book which don't seem to be relevant to the 17 fees,'' Gordon observed."I am not looking at anything other than the 17 fees ... imposed on them [customers].""I am not conducting a Royal Commission into ANZ or the bank."Counsel for the plaintiffs, Justin Gleeson, argued a number of the affidavits dealt with "some form of shadow limit system" that was not revealed to customers and "not known to customers".The ANZ affidavits, Gleeson argued, "suffer from the vice of statements regarding the system" and failed to "focus on what was known to the customer".To save time the judge decided to allow use of the affidavits and to defer questions of admissibility to her reasons for decision, "even though I hate doing that."Some other ANZ material, such as the "general conditions" in the bank's complicated terms and conditions, the judge refused to allow into evidence.The case, which has been funded by IMF (Australia), is a class action on behalf of 34,000 ANZ customers who allege the bank wrongfully overcharged them for exceeding credit card limits, dishonoured transactions and other account breaches.This week's hearing turns on legal issues, such as whether the fees in question are payable on breach of contract. If IMF struggle on this point they will have to persuade the judge to adopt a more expansive version of the law of penalties.IMF and the plaintiffs maintain that the bank levied "exorbitant penalties" under the guise of "service fees".The bank is arguing that fees of up to $35 were justified because it provided services to customers who breached the terms and conditions governing their use of accounts.James Middleweek, from IMF subsidiary Financial Redress, believes the value of the plaintiffs' claims would exceed $50 million, but may run into the "hundreds of millions" if applied to the bank's total customer base.Most of yesterday's hearing was taken up by submissions from the applicants that delved deep into the history of case law to support the claims against ANZ. Gleeson cited legal precedents that were established as far back as the 14th century, as well as a 1670 case involving feuding fishmongers.  Gleeson also invoked some lines from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice to highlight the rise of equity principles over common law and their relevance to the claim against the bank.Following the history lesson, Gleeson completed his submission by detailing 17 distinguishable cases of exception fees affecting ANZ customers where the bank is alleged to have wrongfully