The POWER 30: Katie Crosby Lehmann

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Katie Crosby Lehmann, managing and founding partner at Ciresi Conlin, had several hearings during the pandemic on State of Minnesota v. Charlotte Johnson, et al.

The case pits the Otto Bremer trust against the state of Minnesota because of a controversy that developed after the trustees sold shares in Bremer Financial Corp., which oversees Bremer Bank and the trust. The trustees are now facing an attempt by the bank and the state to replace them with trustees proposed by the Attorney General’s Office.

The trust is the charitable arm of the Bremer dynasty. Its stock in BFC makes up about 90 percent of its assets. According to the trustees in a brief at the Court of Appeals, tax laws meant that the trust would not have enough income to meet its IRS-mandated charitable distribution amounts, which resulted in a sale.

In October 2019 the trustees sold part of the BFC stock, leading to a “flurry” of litigation, as the District Court said, and to an attorney general investigation lasting eight months.

BFC challenged the sale, and in August 2020 the Attorney General’s Office intervened and requested the court to remove the trustees and replace them with persons the A.G. suggested. The District Court did not remove the trusts but implemented interim relief.

Trial started on Sept. 27 in St. Paul.

Crosby-Lehman and her partner Jan Conlin are counsel for an environmental case against Minnesota Department of Natural Resources alleging that DNR’s existing rules and regulations will fail to protect the water, land and air from material harm caused by copper mining on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Crosby Lehman has introduced some programs to administer litigation effectively. She is the co-creator of OneBudget, a software program designed for monitoring current budgets and modeling future budgets.

She is also the architect of the Legal Project Management Program (LPM) launched at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. LPM involves evaluating case scope, budget and the legal work schedule to ensure proper communication with the client and case team and efficient work at all levels.

Even while Bremer Bank litigation went forward, others didn’t. There are two influences on litigation right now, Crosby Lehmann said. One is simply the backlog of cases that now has to be cleared.

The other is a mood of intransigence and lack of professionalism that is reflected in the profession much as it is in the political atmosphere and the rest of the country, Crosby Lehmann said. “There’s an attitude of, ‘If I say it enough it will become true.’”