ANGELA LIATI had not intended to break the law but was acting as a "solitary crusader" when she tried to help the former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld out of a traffic offence scandal, a court has been told.

Liati, 55, has pleaded not guilty to providing a false statement with the intent to pervert the course of justice when she told Einfeld's lawyers he had not been driving his car when it was caught on camera speeding in Mosman in January 2006.

Einfeld was fined $77 but told a court he had been in Forster that weekend and that a visiting US professor, Teresa Brennan, had been driving. In fact, she had died three years earlier.

The Crown prosecutor Wayne Roser, SC, said evidence would show Liati was not in the car that day and that Einfeld was behind the wheel.

In a signed statement, Liati said a woman named Theahresa Brennan, whom she knew as Tessa, had borrowed Einfeld's car and both she and Professor Brennan had driven it on the day in question.

Liati's barrister, Chris Hoy, yesterday told the NSW District Court his client had "made certain assumptions and filled in gaps" in the story, but she had done so to help Einfeld, whom she respected as a "leading humanitarian and judicial figure".

"Ms Liati's conduct throughout this unhappy series of events may not be a perfect example of propriety, decorum and respectability … but in the courts and in life itself members of the community are sometimes not blessed with such responses in times of stress, anxiety and overwhelming empathy for their fellow citizens," Mr Hoy said. "It is the defence case that Ms Liati did not intend in any way to pervert the course of justice."

But Mr Roser said Liati had intentionally provided false information to police and, when shown telephone records and credit card receipts that suggested she had been elsewhere that day, she had conceded she had "obviously got the wrong date".

The trial resumes on Thursday before Judge Michael Finnane.