Easements Flashcards
An easement can be either legal or equitable
- Legal S1(2)(a)LPA 1925
- Equitable S3 LPA 1925
Re: Ellenborough Park - Test for capability of easements
- Must be dominant and servient tenement
- Easement must accommodate the dominant tenement
- No common ownership and occupation of dominant and servient tenements
- The right claimed must lie in grant
Dominant and servient tenement
- There must be benefitted and burdened land - London & Blenheim Estates v Ladbroke
- Hawkins v Rutter - Right to park barge benefited no land (not easement)
- Alfred Becket v Lyons - Right to collect coal from shore benefitted no land (no easement)
- Banstead Golf Club - Easement cannot exist in gross, there must be dominant and servient land
Easement must accommodate the dominant tenement
Benefit land rather than the person Cases; - P & A Swift - Hill v Tupper - Moody v Steggles - Bailey v Stephens
P + A Swift
Does the easement touch and concern the land;
- Value
- Quality
- Nature
- Mode of use
Hill v Tupper
- Right to launch pleasure boats into canal rejected as an easement as would not benefit any owner of the land
- The easement only benefited him not the land, as the land was not inextricably and intrinsically linked to the use for running a pleasure boat business (land would not always be used for that business so was a personal right)
- Therefore court held that the right could not exist as an easement
Moody v Steggles
- An easement to hang a sign on a neighbour’s house was for the benefit of the land as the land had been used as a pub for 40 years.
- Therefore land judged specific to use as a pub, therefore the easement benefited the land not just the individual
- Therefore the right was for the benefit of the land, which was inextricably linked to the use of the land as a pub.
Bailey v Stephens
o Must be proximity to show benefit is to land, not purely personal
o LJ Blythe - Land in Kent, cannot bind land in Northumberland
No common ownership of dominant and servient tenements
Roe v Siddons - If a right exists over your own land, then it is known as a quasi-easement, which is capable of becoming an easement upon division of land
Right must lie in grant - 3 rules
- Capable grantor
- Sufficiently definite
- Judicially recognised right
Bland v Mosely
- Burdened owner must know how to comply with the right
- Right to view was too imprecise to be an easement
William Aldred’s case
Easement to enjoy scenic view too imprecise
Right must be judicially recognised. List some judicially recognised rights;
- Right of way – Bowman v Griffith
- Right of storage – Wight v Macadam
- Right to light – Colls v Home & Colonial Stores
- Right to water – Race v Ward
- Right to air – Wong v Beaumont
- Right to support (structural) – Dalton v Angus
- Right to drainage (and other utilities gas, electricity) – Atwood v Bovis
- Right to pollute a river – Scott-Whitehead v National Coal Board
What are the only 2 permitted negative easements? (closed list)
- Right to light
- Right to support
Phipps v Pears
Right to protection from weather is negative so not capable of being easement as not on closed list
Hunter v Canary Wharf
Right to TV signal denied as negative and closed list
Additional 3 factors to be capable of being easement
- Cannot be at owners expense
- Interest must be exercisable as of right
- Right must not ammount to exclusive possession
Regis Property v Redman
Right to hot water was at owvers expense so could not be easement
Rance v ELvin
Right to the passage of water through pipes was judged not to be at the owners expense as though the water incurred a cost this could be remedied by a quasi easement for the paying of the water bill cost. Therefore did not incur expenditure at burdened land’s expense
Jones v Pritchard
No obligation to effect repairs, but there is an obligation to allow the tenant of the dominant land to enter the servient land to effect repairs
Green v Ashco
Permission to use driveway required. Therefore not exercisable as of right
Right cannot ammount to exclusive possession case progression
- Batchelor v Marlow
- Girgsby v Melville
- Jackson v Mulvaney
- Moncrieff v Jamieson
- Virdi v Chana