A five-day trial baring a bitter divide in the Lund supermarket family ended Monday with a judge peeling off philosophical pearls, quoting from the Bible and American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
Hennepin County Chief Judge Ivy Bernhardson said she wanted "to leave Ms. [Kim] Lund and Mr. [Tres] Lund and the whole Lund family with some words from the gospel lesson" she heard at church on Sunday. Those words came from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew: "But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment," as the New International Version puts it.
She followed that with a dollop of Niebuhr: "Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love that goes beyond justice."
"While they only are words, there are profound thoughts behind these words. I wish the parties peace," she said.
Kim Lund, the oldest of four siblings who own Lunds & Byerlys supermarkets, sued Lunds Inc. and her brother Russell "Tres" Lund III, the company's CEO, to release the 25 percent stake she owns in the company. Bernhardson already has ruled that Lunds must buy out Kim Lund. Now, she must decide how much the 25 percent is worth.
Kim Lund's financial experts value her stake at about $80 million. Lunds Inc. says it is worth just over $21 million.
The lawsuit came after years of Kim Lund, 57, trying to free her equity. She said she wants the money for charitable giving. Tres Lund said the debt needed to buy out Kim at $80 million would cripple the company, particularly while competition is getting hotter in the Twin Cities grocery market.
Meanwhile, the two other Lunds siblings — Shauna Lund McFeeley and Robert Lund — have testified that Kim's deal would unfairly place her interests above theirs, including endangering the full amount of their dividend payouts. The siblings receive annual pretax distributions, the latest being $2.7 million to each of them, although taxes ate a lot of the amount, court proceedings on Monday indicated.