After failing to rescue Iron Range mining projects, business owner sued for not paying legal bills

A Minneapolis law firm has sued a Virginia businessman behind two ill-fated Minnesota iron ore ventures for failing to pay more than $292,000 in legal bills.

Thomas Clarke, who lives near Roanoke, Va., was sued last week by Winthrop & Weinstine in connection with the bankruptcy of ERP Iron Ore, which Clarke controlled. In early 2017, ERP bought the operations of Magnetation, an idled and bankrupt mining company with properties on the western Iron Range.

But Clarke never restarted the former Magnetation, and ERP Iron Ore itself went bankrupt in 2018. Clarke’s much larger foray into Minnesota iron mining — his attempt to revive Essar’s stalled taconite plant in Nashwauk — also came to an ignominious end.

Winthrop & Weinstine represented Clarke and another Clarke company involved in the ERP bankruptcy, Merida Natural Resources. Merida was supposed to provide financing to ERP to help it reorganize and exit bankruptcy. ERP never did reorganize, auctioning off its assets instead.

Merida Natural Resources and Clarke’s wife, Ana Clarke, are also named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in Hennepin County District Court.

Winthrop & Weinstine claims it “repeatedly and over many months” invoiced the Clarkes and Merida for $292,205, but they never paid. None of the defendants disputed or objected to the bill’s amount — or to the legal services provided, the lawsuit said.

Clarke did not respond to requests for comment.

Clarke, a nursing home operator, dove into the mining industry in the 2010s — iron ore in Minnesota and coal in West Virginia (an effort that also failed).

In Minnesota, Clarke picked up Magnetation, a “scram-mining” operation that extracted ore from the wastes of old iron mines. Clarkes’s Chippewa Capital Partners, with a $550 million bid, won a bankruptcy court auction in 2017 for Essar’s half-built $1.9 billion taconite plant.

Essar Steel Minnesota, an arm of India’s Essar Global, had stopped construction in July 2016 when the company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, owing creditors more than $1 billion.

By the end of 2017, the former Essar Minnesota, rechristened Mesabi Metallics, had retooled its finances in bankruptcy and had a new lease agreement with the state of Minnesota. But Mesabi Metallics quickly became a shambles, and Clarke lost control of the company in 2018.

Essar Global eventually regained control of Mesabi Metallics, but it lost its state leases in 2023. Mesabi Metallics says it still plans to finish the half-built plant.