By IAN BAILEY -- Canadian Press

VANCOUVER -- Sarah McLachlan wrapped up three days of verbal combat with a lawyer Tuesday by taking a hard shot at the attorney's client, who is suing her to win cash and credit for his work on her debut album.

"Unfortunately, Darryl (Neudorf) has an elevated and deluded sense of what he did on this project," McLachlan said.

As McLachlan returned the gaze of Neudorf's lawyer, Jonathan Simkin, Neudorf sat at a table, head down, taking notes and showing no reaction to the acerbic remark.

The "project" was McLachlan's 1988 debut album, Touch.

Neudorf, a Vancouver-based musician McLachlan has described as a "sweet man," was recruited by her label in late 1987 to help the then-inexperienced singer assemble songs for her debut album Touch.

Now he is suing McLachlan and her label, Nettwerk Productions, claiming he was not given proper credit or compensation for work on four songs.

The songs are Vox, Sad Clown, Steaming and Strange World -- tracks from the album that sold more than 600,000 copies and launched a career that has seen McLachlan become one of North America's top female vocalists.

McLachlan conceded Tuesday that Neudorf, a former drummer with the rock group 54-40, came up with the titles for two of the songs.

But she continued to reject his claims that he deserved songwriting credit.

"I have a strong feeling in my heart that I wrote the song and I have carried it with me since 1987," McLachlan said at one point, referring to Vox.

Simkin bluntly asked McLachlan if she was telling the truth in 1996 during discovery evidence taken a year after Neudorf filed his suit.

"On a number of occasions in these discoveries I was not aware fully of how to word things, just in terms of word games," McLachlan told Simkin.

As McLachlan neared the end of her cross-examination, she mused on the artistic style that has drawn her fans to courtroom 44 - including a teenaged pair Tuesday, who earned a hug from the singer by presenting her with a bouquet of flowers.

The singer, who has been accompanied by a pair of bodyguards, spoke openly about how she creates her music.

"Each record is a different experience," she said. "Each time, I try to get better and get more of my essence out."

Halifax-born McLachlan said her musical style changes from record to record to account for the changes in her life.

In the last few years, those changes have included marriage to her longtime drummer Ashwin Sood and the increasing success of her Lilith Fair tour of female vocalists.

The trial has been told that when McLachlan worked on Touch, she was smitten with the music of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush to the point that she lacked her own musical identity.

On Tuesday, she gently dismissed such suggestions.

"I had an intuitive sense of the kind of music I wanted to make -- not in terms of pop, rock or folk but really good music that moved people," she said.

McLachlan was expected to return briefly to the stand for friendly questioning from her own lawyer to clear up a few points.

Senior officials from her label, Nettwerk Productions, are then expected to testify.

There is no end in sight at this point to the trial, once slotted to last three weeks. It is now in its fifth week.