The chair of the committee that negotiated Elon Musk’s $55 billion compensation plan and Tesla’s former general counsel testified Monday that the plan was designed to push Musk to meet challenging market cap and performance milestones, not to make for an easy payday.

Ira Ehrenpreis, who chaired Tesla’s compensation committee in 2017 when it was considering supplementing Musk’s existing compensation plan, was the first witness to appear at the trial in which a Tesla shareholder is claiming the company is overpaying Musk. The bench trial before Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick is scheduled to run through Friday.