Yes it’s all true!
Redenbach stressed that he didn’t intentionally overbill, suggesting to the court that the discrepancies could be the result of the vagaries of international time zones or his use of a U.S.-based billing system. Though given that the underlying dispute involved a civic centre in a remote mining town roughly 700 miles west of Sydney, it’s hard to imagine Redenbach spent pulling all-nighters on the case while criss-crossing the globe.
Cross-examined about how he could have worked 34.5 hours on September 19, 2019, Redenbach insisted he did work the hours and told the court he remembered that day clearly because he was at home recovering from surgery.
“I was on my sick bed, doing it with boxes being delivered to my home. I know all about it. I remember that time vividly,” he told the court. “It was a difficult time for me, because my dog died, and I couldn’t even—I couldn’t even lift her up to have her euthanized.”
Yeah, not a lot of international jet-setting work from the sick bed. Maybe he was billing in dog years that day as a tribute?
Justice Elisabeth Peden found Redenbach to be a “thoroughly unimpressive witness” who gave “self-serving evidence and even evidence which I consider was false.”
Generally speaking, overbilling like this is a product of bad record-keeping: the work actually happens, but it gets recorded on the wrong day creating an embarrassing impossible day. It’s a reason to invest in better time-tracking products — not necessarily to make the hourly bills better, but to accrue a better internal data for the purpose of setting fair and accurate value-based billing.
Though the court in this case felt the problem went well-beyond lazy records. Redenbach also upped his rates over the course of the engagement, levying a series of “uplift” fees based on the success of the litigation and also adjusted hourly rates upward — all told these success adjustments totaled around 3 million Australian dollars.
Justice Peden found in favor of Broken Hill, awarding A$1.5 million in compensation from Redenbach, A$46,010 in compensation from his firm, and another firm linked to Redenbach had to pay the A$504,698 for misleading the city about its bill.
At this rate he’s not going to have enough money to keep a boat running back and forth over the international date line.
Read more at ATL
