Legal News

For decades ALKA has been the leader in land use litigation support services to the legal community. Our areas of specialty include zoning, land use, highest and best use, eminent domain, codes & ordinances and of course, land planning. We have been privileged to work along side the leading land use attorneys, and have testified as experts in all of the trial courts of northeastern Illinois. In addition we have testified on hundreds of occasions before planning commissions, zoning boards, village boards, city councils and other governmental agencies.

During the near future we will be highlighting a collection of the trials in which we have testified. The actual descriptions of the cases will be written by the lead attorney. We will ultimately over the next 24 months assemble these materials so that they may be published for educational purposes.

Are You a Planner?

There are so many indivisuals that call themselves planners that the term has become very confusing. Since I am involved with land use litigation support I hear the term all the time and I have found most land use  and zoning lawyers and judges are equally confussed with the term. There are land planners, land use planners, social planners, economic planners, urban planners, city planners, architectural planners, environmental planners, traffic planners and the list goes on and on.In most states planners are not directly licensed so any one can call themselves a planner and perhaps for this reason we see the term on the letterheads of many professionals involved in the real estate industry. None the less there is a vast difference in the training and experience of planners who are called upon to testify before planning commissions, zoning boards and in trial courts. It would take a long time to explain these differences and the skill sets that are required for various types of land use, zoning and eminent domain trials but let it suffice to say that before you call yourself a planner you better undertand the differences.If your still confused give me a call. You really can't tell a book by its cover.

Ethics for Experts

My field of expertise is rather broad and I have had decades of experience testifying in the trial courts of northeastern Illinois. I have always been amazed that for every opinion that I develop after studying a particular situation  someone will come along with another completely diametrically opposing opinion. Perhaps this is what lawsuits are all about. But within my realm of expertise, planning, zoning and real estate and eminent domain, the actual difference of opinions can, on certain occasions, be rather narrow.I understand that sometimes there may exist a gray area in which two qualified experts may disagree.  But over the past several years I have witnessed opinions that can best be characterized as extreme or under studied or maybe simply unethical. I can not judge these folks who somehow are allowed to testify as experts but I can say their their lack of proper professional conduct is extremely harmful to both sides of a legal dispute. But the attorney is the quarterback and he or she is working from the same sheet of music as their experts and  I would put them in the same boat in terms of credibility or lack thereof as their retained experts.These folks weave themselves a horrible web from which they can not recover. During this past year two trials come to mind where we  had several egregious positions from land use experts and appraisers. In both instances  the juries were perceptive enough to discount their testimony and weigh in on the side of the truth and the actual facts. We don't hear much about ethics these days but maybe its time for each profession  including the legal profession to revisit this subject before the government does it for us. "O what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive."


Stay tuned as we further blog on some fascinating cases in which Allen L. Kracower & Associates, Inc. served as experts in planning, zoning and land use; and as part of a professional 
team working with the best land use attorneys in the country.
Allen L. Kracower, President
Allen L. Kracower & Associates, Inc.

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