Easements Flashcards
St Edmundsbury v Clark
Courts will construe reservations strictly against landowner - had the right to reserve what they wanted and are assumed to have done so
Attwood v Bovis Homes
If burden has substantially changed, the increased use of easement cannot be claimed
Right to drainage and utilities through defined channels
Re Ellensborough Park
Test for capability of being an easement:
1) Must be dominant and servient tenement (identifiable piece of land)
2) Must accommodate the dominant tenement
3) No common ownership
4) Must lie in grant
London & Blenheim Estates v Ladbroke
There must be land for the benefit of which the easement exists and one which is burdened by its exercise
Right to park
Hawkins v Rutter
Easement cannot exist in gross - not exercisable independent of interest in the land
P&A Swift Insurance v Combined English Stores
Does the easement affect the value, convenience or amenity of land?
Must be more than merely personal benefit
Hill v Tupper
Right which facilitates business but is not sufficiently connected with use of land is not capable of being an easement
Moody v Steggles
Right which is sufficiently connected to use of dominant land can be an easement if inextricably connected with use of land
Pugh v Savage
Need not be adjoining land
Bailey v Stephens
Must be proximity to establish that the dominant land actually derives benefit
Roe v Siddons
Dominant and servient lands must be owned and occupied by two separate parties
William Aldred’s Case
Nature and extent must be capable of reasonably exact description
Bland v Mosely
Cannot claim right to a view - too ambiguous
Browne v Flower
Cannot claim right to privacy - too vague
Harris v De Pinna
No easement to flow of light through undefined channels
Borman v Griffiths
Right of way
Colls v Home & Colonial Stores
Right of light (specific window receives certain amount)
Race v Ward
Right to water through defined channel
Wong v Beaumont Property Trust
Right to air in defined channel
Dalton v Angus
Right to support
Regency Villas v Diamond Resorts
Right to use facilities
Dyce v Lady James Hay
Courts are willing to accept new positive easements to accommodate new social and technological changes
Wright v Macadam
Right of storage
Effect of s62 LPA 1925 - renewal of lease/sale, informal permission becomes full easement implied into new lease
Phipps v Pears
Right to protection from weather claimed by analogy to easement of support - courts are unwilling to recognise new negative easement
Hunter v Canary Wharf
Cannot claim right to TV signal - should have done so via restrictive covenant
Regis Property v Redman
Claim to supply of hot water was not an easement as it incurred additional expense on servient landowner
Jones v Pritchard
Servient landowner is not obliged to do or spend anything
Not under any obligation to repair, but must allow dominant landowner to enter servient tenement to effect repairs at his own expense
Rance v Elvin
Easement to allow passage of water was allowed, subject to quasi-contractual obligation for dominant landowner to pay for his share
Green v Ashco Horticulturalists
Must be exercisable as of right and not dependent on permission every time
s62 operates where there is casual permission to exercise right permanently
Grigsby v Melville
Right to use whole cellar was not an easement - amounted to exclusive use
Batchelor v Marlow
‘Ouster principle’ - is the servient owner left with any reasonable use of his land? - easement to park 9-5 on business days amounted to significant possession
Moncrieff v Jameson
Scottish case (persuasive only) - ‘does the servient owner retain possession and control of the land’ - could do anything but interfere with claimant’s parking rights
Kettel & Ors v Bloomfold
Confirmed Batchelor v Marlow (not overruled) - claimant’s right to use designated parking spaces was as he retained reasonable use of the spaces
Pryce v McGuinness
Utilities will not be implemented by necessity
Manjang v Drammeh
If there is another access route, no matter how inconvenient, the easement will not be implied via necessity
Pwllback Colliery v Woodman
To be implied by common intention the property must be used in a definite and particular manner and the easement is necessary for that
Wong v Beaumont Property
Right to ventilation implied by common intention - property let as a restaurant
Re Webb’s Lease
High onus of proof on someone claiming an implied common intention
Not satisfactory that the right had been openly exercised prior to the transaction
Peckham v Ellison
Reserved through common intention - facts must be consistent with any other explanation than common intention
Wheeldon v Burrows
On sale or lease of part of land, grantee will receive all quasi-easements which are
1) Continuous and apparent
2) Used regularly to be a clear and objective feature of the land
3) Apparent upon reasonable inspection
4) Necessary for reasonable enjoyment of that land and used at time of transfer
Pyer v Carter
Can include underground easement if it would be apparent to someone familiar with the subject (e.g. surveyor)
Constagliola v English
Where the common owner hadn’t actively used their right for a few months, but has generally used it in the past, it was still held to be in use by the owner
Wheeler v Saunders
If there is alternative and equally adequate access to land then right of way is not necessary to reasonable enjoyment of that lanf
Millman v Ellis
If right of way is significantly more convenient, then it will be held to be necessary to the reasonable enjoyment of that land
Kent v Kavanagh
Only operates upon sale/lease where immediately before there was a common owner and occupier of the whole
P&S Platt Limited v Crouch
No need for diversity of occupation to imply easements under s62
Williams v Sandy Lane
30 years’ non-use and overgrowth of right of way did not make the way impassable - not sufficient to demonstrate intention to abandon
Swan v Sinclair
Right of way had not been used for 50 years and was blocked by fences - abandoned
Regan v Paul Properties
Injunction unlikely to be justified where infringement is only trivial or temporary/overly oppressive/can be compensated by damages
