Wine Connoisseur Trades Insults with Lawyer in Dispute over Guilty Plea in Arson Case
A California wine connoisseur and his one-time lawyer are trading insults and barbs in court filings over an arson guilty plea.
Mark Christian Anderson is pinning the blame for his plea bargain choice on his one-time lawyer, Mark Reichel, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Anderson is asking a federal judge in Sacramento to withdraw his 2009 guilty plea in a 2005 arson fire at a wine warehouse that destroyed 6 million bottles of wine. In the 19-count plea agreement, Anderson had also admitted to embezzling from warehouse clients, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year.
Anderson now says he did nothing wrong, was not at the warehouse on the day of the fire, and did not sell his clients’ wine and pocket the money. Anderson says in a court filing that Reichel “threw me under the bus!”
“If one were going to ask someone to attempt to castigate, humiliate and pontificate about something he does not understand or comprehend, with all the pomposity and subtlety of a Victorian costermonger,” Anderson wrote, “Mr. Reichel would certainly win a penny at the circus.”
Reichel counters in court documents that representing Anderson has been “a bizarre experience.” Anderson spoke in riddles, changed his story, and gave the names of witnesses that didn’t exist. “He is extremely difficult to work with,” Reichel wrote, “and that is an understatement.”
