In a real estate condemnation trial that lasted only three days last December, a DuPage County jury decided Country Lakes Golf Course in Naperville was worth $1.25 million less than the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County offered for the property several years ago.
But it may not end there. Smart money and history says Robert Krilich Sr. and the land trust that owns the 240-acre parcel will appeal the condemnation decision, which could take years to go through the courts. The owners were seeking $20 million for the golf course and adjacent property.
The jury’s $10.7 million selling price came as a surprise to everyone.
“Our attorney said that’s really unheard of for a jury to go with the lower appraisal, and we [originally] offered him $12 million,” said FPDDC chairman Dewey Pierotti. “Years later, with all the [legal] costs and expenses added to it, he’s getting $1.25 million less than we offered him. In my lifestyle, that’s a big number.”
The county began proceedings in 1999 to condemn the 18-hole course in northwest Naperville. At the time, it claimed a need to manage stormwater in the area.
This is how governments usually frame these types of lawsuits. Because previous to the controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Kelo v. New London), they couldn’t just say “we want your land” and take it. There had to be a sound reason for the “public good”, usually environmental, which is fashionable these days. But ‘tis strange this is how DuPage County keeps enlarging its golf course portfolio.
It has never built its own course. It did, however, build a third nine holes at Maple Meadows.
Makes me wonder if that $68 million countywide referendum in November, 2006 to acquire more open space and land for the forest preserve would have passed if it was presented as a plan to fatten its collection of golf courses. This in light of the county trying desperately to balance its budget.
Stormwater management. Which interestingly enough is the same reason given for acquiring two of its three other courses, Oak Meadows (former Elmhurst CC) and Maple Meadows (former Brookwood CC), which hug both banks of Salt Creek just north of I-290. The private owners of Elmhurst CC (east side of the creek) didn’t want the land used as anything other than a golf course, so they sold it to the county in 1986 for $6.4 million. Brookwood CC, on the west side, was taken from its owners through a contentious condemnation lawsuit in 1991. Brookwood owners received $7.9 million.
The county also owns Green Meadows, the former Black Horse. It was purchased to prevent a developer from building on the land.
Perhaps one factor may have influenced the jury in the Country Lakes trial. Standard to published reports on these proceedings was the inclusion of irrelevant, negative references to Krilich serving time in federal prison, a controversial “booby bar” outing at the course, or a violation of landscape debris being dumped in an environmentally-sensitive area. A high percentage of previous articles in both the Naperville Sun and Daily Herald contained these “juicy” tidbits despite the fact they are not germane to the issue.
I get the feeling from reading these news reports and the politicians’ quotes contained therein that we’re all supposed to be relieved DuPage County is riding in on its big white horse to save us all from this tawdry golf course and its shady owners. Makes me wonder if in appeal the attorneys for the golf course would claim the unnecessary and irrelevant publicity about the course and owners tainted the jury.
Don’t touch that dial.
Check our Worm Castings blog at www.chicagolandgolf.com for more stories on the Country Lakes condemnation, and for several posts on DuPage County also moving to condemn 105 acres of a future golf course site at St. Andrews GC – another land grab of private property by the forest preserve district.
Is that snake oil on your wrist? Nope, it’s a Q-Ray bracelet
Decided to spend one of those snowy winter evenings catching up on some reading. To continue a story we broke in February, 2003, and have been following through the courts and updating ever since, I decided to read through the Court of Appeals opinion following the recent denial of the appeal of the manufacturers of Elk Grove Village-based Q-Ray bracelets in the 2003 Federal Trade Commission v. QTC (Q-Ray) fraud case.
While grinding through legalese can often be dry and tedious – almost as bad as reading the New York Times – I actually found it entertaining because the judge who wrote it had a sense of humor.
Chicagoland Golf got involved in this story back in 2003 because these bracelets were being marketed so heavily to golfers. For a time it seemed a large majority of players on all tours, male and female, were wearing Q-Ray bracelets. The not-so-subtle implication was that they worked as the manufacturer claimed, virtually eliminating pain and ostensibly helping lower scores. And that’s exactly what Q-Ray claimed. Pain-free, better swing, lower scores.
Just about everyone has seen the infomercials – they once littered the Golf Channel at all hours – which were filled with gushing “testimonials” from “satisfied customers”. Most of these infomercials were filmed in the company’s exhibit at the annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando.
We were hoping to save some of our readers from becoming suckers and sending this company their hard-earned cash. For cheap pieces of crap with “magical powers”.
The retail prices for the bracelets sold during the period covered by the lawsuit – 2000 to 2003 – ranged from $49.95 to $249.95 – a mark-up of over 650 percent, according to the court’s original findings in 2005. What’s even more galling is that these quack-device hustlers were so brazen, Q-Ray’s web site once warned consumers about “imitators”.
Hah! Someone was actually knocking off a fake bracelet? I’m surprised Q-Ray didn’t sue for patent infringement.
On the other hand, they don’t grant patents for products using scientific principles that don’t exist.
In a 10-page opinion, Chief judge Frank Easterbrook of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit wrote:
For the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet, by contrast, all statements about how the product works—Q-Rays, ionization, enhancing the flow of bio-energy, and the like—are blather. Defendants might as well have said:
Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.
Defendants’ business was a profitable one; that much, at least, they concede. (It is so profitable that they continue to carry it on despite the injunction that requires them to stop making most of their old claims for its efficacy. Today it is sold with testimonials and vaporous statements.)
According to the district court’s findings, almost everything that defendants have said about the bracelet is false.
Here are some highlights:
• Defendants promoted the bracelet as a miraculous cure for chronic pain, but it has no therapeutic effect.
• Defendants told consumers that claims of “immediate, significant or complete pain relief” had been “test-proven”; they hadn’t.
• The bracelet does not emit “Q-Rays” (there are no such things) and is not ionized (the bracelet is an electric conductor, and any net charge dissipates swiftly). The bracelet’s chief promoter chose these labels because they are simple and easily remembered —and because Polaroid Corp. blocked him from calling the bangle “polarized”.
• The bracelet is touted as “enhancing the flow of bio-energy” or “balancing the flow of positive and negative energies”; these empty phrases have no connection to any medical or scientific effect. Every other claim made about the mechanism of the bracelet’s thapeutic effect likewise is techno-babble.
• Defendants represented that the therapeutic effect wears off in a year or two, despite knowing that the bracelet’s properties do not change. This assertion is designed to lead customers to buy new bracelets. Likewise the false statement that the bracelet has a “memory cycle specific to each individual wearer” so that only the bracelet’s original wearer can experience pain relief is designed to increase sales by eliminating the second-hand market and “explaining” the otherwise-embarrassing fact that the buyer’s friends and neighbors can’t perceive any effect.
• Even statements about the bracelet’s physical composition are false. It is sold in “gold” and “silver” varieties but is made of brass.