Edwin Moldauer’s career at a winery in California’s San Joaquin Valley quickly turned sour, but the resulting legal cases have had a remarkably long shelf life.
Now, more than 12 years since Moldauer left his job at Mission Bell Winery in Madera County, a federal judge has stymied the self-described whistleblower’s ongoing dispute with his former employer.
Moldauer’s latest complaint against Constellation Brands, Inc., the owner of Mission Bell Winery, was, among other problems, filed in the wrong court, a Washington-based judge ruled last week.
“Moldauer alleges no activity by Constellation in the District of Columbia beyond contending that the company ‘conducts business in the district,’” U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper noted, adding that “this is insufficient to demonstrate” the D.C.-based court had legal jurisdiction.
Hammering the point home, Cooper said Moldauer’s efforts to amend his original complaint “would be futile.”
But while Cooper’s judicial reasoning sounds dry, the underlying case is ripe with drama, including competing allegations of wrongdoing, an outstanding Madera County warrant for Moldauer’s arrest and Moldauer’s eventual arrival in his present home in Israel.
“He alleges that Constellation is responsible for his fleeing Australia and New Zealand, where he has been charged with, among other things, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest,” Cooper noted.
In a brief telephone interview Monday, Moldauer said he will be appealing the decision, though he declined to discuss specifics while the appeal is pending.
“It’s an interesting case, I have to say,” Moldauer said, adding that it “has a long history.”
A Constellation Brands spokesperson said Monday the company could not comment on litigation. In a legal brief filed in January, the company was more blunt, dismissing Moldauer as a “vexatious litigant who has imposed irresponsibly on scarce judicial resources in pursuit of a misguided personal vendetta.”
Based in New York state, Constellation owns more 100 brands, including Robert Mondavi Winery, Clos du Bois and Estancia. In September 2000, the Romanian-born Moldauer was hired to work at the company’s Mission Bell Winery as a senior cost analyst.
Two years later, Moldauer departed. He says, as part of his lawsuit seeking back pay, that he was “posted away” to another assignment. His former employers have said he was fired for performance-related problems, including insubordination.
“The timing of Moldauer’s new ‘posting’ happens to coincide with a California state criminal complaint and bench warrant issued against him for alleged theft of trade secrets,” Cooper noted.
A Fresno-based judge’s earlier decision in a separate lawsuit explained that the Madera County District Attorney’s office in 2002 suspected Moldauer of faxing “confidential price and customer lists” to his employer’s competitors. At the time, Constellation Brands was called Canandaigua Brands.
Moldeaur left the United States about two weeks before the criminal complaint was filed Dec. 31, 2002.
The company also sued Moldauer. He, in turn, claimed in a variety of legal and administrative complaints both in the United States and in other countries that he had been retaliated against because he had discovered the company engaged in “accounting irregularities.”
“Such discovery ruffled some colleagues at the Misson Bell Winery,” Moldauer stated in his lawsuit filed late last year, adding that “as a result, the working atmosphere at the winery was poisoned.”
Moldauer, representing himself though he is not a lawyer, filed the latest U.S. suit after the Labor Department rejected his administrative complaints filed under the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reform law. He sought the accumulated total from the $60,000-a-year salary he says he was owed for the last dozen years.
In dismissing the case Friday, Cooper did not dig into the merits of Moldauer’s arguments. Instead, he concluded that “there is nothing to tie Moldauer’s allegations to the District of Columbia.”