We all get the same 24 hours in a day. Well, most of us do. One creative Sydney solicitor apparently operated on a different calendar.
Keith Redenbach, principal of Redenbach Legal (pictured) and a veteran who once graced the corridors of Norton Rose Fulbright and Maddox, has been found by the NSW Supreme Court to have engaged in some truly heroic overcharging on behalf of his former client, Broken Hill City Council.
The numbers are eye-watering. Redenbach Legal managed to rack up a $10 million bill for work on a building dispute that ultimately delivered the council a modest $1.5 million settlement (plus some architect contributions).
On at least six separate days in 2018 and 2019, the firm billed for more than 24 hours of work. Highlights included 31.12 hours, 34.5 hours, and a personal best of 36 hours in a single day. Over one three-day stretch: 103 hours. Justice Elisabeth Peden was not impressed, describing the feats as “impossible”.
Under cross-examination, the 30-year practitioner blamed “operator error”, handwritten time sheets, and — naturally — the vagaries of international time zones and travel. Never mind that the work largely concerned a dusty civic centre renovation in Broken Hill.
Slaving Away
Redenbach remained adamant he had slaved away, even while home sick after a hospital stay, with boxes of files delivered to his bedside. He poignantly recalled the day his dog died: too busy billing, he couldn’t even lift her for euthanasia. “I do remember it very, very well,” he told the court, adding that watching his business crumble while being “the only unpaid person in this courtroom” was deeply upsetting.
Her Honour found the explanations “incredible” and “unsatisfactory”. She took a particularly dim view of the tendency to blame everyone else. Conclusion: the council paid for services not rendered. The impossible invoices are now heading to an assessor to work out exactly how much was overpaid.
Rates had crept up nicely over eight years, from $390/hour to $480, then a cheeky $650–$750. Throw in a 25% “success” fee (around $2.1 million) and a nearly $1 million hourly rate “adjustment”, and the bill looked very healthy indeed.
Peden disallowed both the uplift and adjustment, found nearly $2.4 million held on trust had been “misapplied”, and ordered Redenbach personally to cough up $1.5 million in compensation, plus more than $750,000 from the firm in restitution. She also hit them with $504,698 in damages for misleading the council on fee estimates.
The underlying stoush was over a 2016 renovation of the Broken Hill Civic Centre that the council says was bungled by builders and architects. The architects settled in 2022, stumping up $4.5 million toward the council’s costs, less than half of what Redenbach ultimately charged.
In short, a regional council with a dodgy building project ended up with a legal bill that defied both physics and basic commercial sense. The judge has now restored a measure of earthly reality.
Redenbach Legal was contacted for comment.
