Moncrieff v Jamieson

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Moncrieff v Jamieson [2007] UKHL 42 is a Scottish property law case decided by the House of Lords on easements.

Scots property law governs the rules of property in Scotland. A fundamental distinction in Scots law is between heritable and moveable property. Heritable property includes land and buildings, whereas moveable property includes property which can actually be physically moved, which would normally pass only on delivery. Moveable rights also include those to intellectual property, such as patents, trade marks and copyrights. Agreement on an offer for property purchase is a legally binding contract, resulting in a system of conveyancing where buyers get their survey done before making a bid to the seller's solicitor, and after a closing date for bids the seller's acceptance is binding on both parties, preventing gazumping. In recent times sales of house by way of offering to sell to the first party to make an unconditional offer of a fixed price has eroded the traditional offers over system. It is important historically because the feu was first created in Scotland, which is an antecedent of the fee system, used in conveyancing throughout the common law system.

House of Lords upper house in the Parliament of the United Kingdom

The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is granted by appointment or else by heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster. Officially, the full name of the house is the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.

Contents

Facts

The appellant (J) appealed against a decision (2005 1 S.C. 281) that a right of vehicular access from a public road included a right to park on the servient tenement such vehicles as were reasonably incidental to the enjoyment of access to the dominant tenement. The respondents (M) owned a property situated between the foot of a steep escarpment and the foreshore. Vehicles could not be driven onto the property. The property once formed part of the lands owned by J and he was the owner of the land between the property and the public road. Since the property had no access to the public road, the rights conveyed by the disposition in 1973 included a right of access from the public road through J's land. The effect of that conveyance was to confer a servitude right of access to the property from the public road for both pedestrian and vehicular traffic; and a right to stop vehicles on the servient tenement in order to turn, load and unload goods from them and set down and pick up passengers was accessory to the right of vehicular access. M claimed that there was also an accessory right to park vehicles on the servient tenement. The sheriff granted declarator that M were entitled to park vehicles on the servient tenement in the exercise of rights accessory to the servitude right of access and pronounced permanent interdict against J. The Court of Session dismissed an appeal. J submitted that it was not possible in the law of Scotland for there to be a servitude of parking; a permanent interdict was unnecessary and its terms were too uncertain to enable J to know what was prohibited by it.

Judgment

The appeal was dismissed.

  1. A servitude right to park could be constituted as ancillary to a servitude right of vehicular access if it was necessary for the enjoyment of the servitude of access.
  2. The express grant of a right of access had to be construed in the light of the circumstances that existed when it was granted in 1973, but it was not necessary for it to be shown that all the rights that were later claimed as necessary for the comfortable use and enjoyment of the servitude were actually in use at that date. It was sufficient that they might be considered to have been in contemplation at the time of the grant, having regard to what the dominant proprietor might reasonably be expected to do in the exercise of his right to convenient and comfortable use of the property, Ewart v Cochrane (1861) 4 Macq. 117 considered. In the particular and unusual circumstances of the instant case, the rights ancillary to the express grant of a right of access in favour of the dominant tenement included a right to park vehicles on the servient tenement, in so far as that was reasonably incidental to the enjoyment of the dominant tenement.
  3. The history of the case justified the granting of interdict and in practice there ought to be no real difficulty in giving effect to the declarator or in enforcement of the interdict.

The House of Lords recognised that easements must always be exercised civiliter (without amounting to exclusive possession over the servient land), but the House of Lords displayed a more sympathetic attitude to easements that substantially exclude the servient owner.

Obiter, the court also recognised the possibility of a servitude right of parking in Scottish law and an easement of parking in English law.

An equitable servitude is a term used in the law of real property to describe a nonpossessory interest in land that operates much like a covenant running with the land. In England and Wales the term is defunct and in Scotland it has very long been a sub-type of the Scottish legal version of servitudes, which are what English law calls easements. However covenants and equitable servitudes in most of the jurisdictions across North America, are slightly different. The usual distinction is based on the remedy plaintiff seeks and precedent will allow for the scenario in question. Where the terms are unmerged, holders of a covenant seek money damages; holders of equitable servitudes seek injunctions. The term used to exist in England widely before Tulk v Moxhay and as byproduct of the Judicature Acts became one of the fullest mergers of equity and common law in England and Wales so as to agree initially on the term "equitable covenant", then coming to be united in the term covenant save that "equitable" bears a particular meaning in English property rights since at least 1925: it means not fully compliant with registration/written formalities. If lacks legally routine formalities it is not a full legal covenant and therefore more tenuous, often only enforceable personally and against the original covenantor.

English law legal system of England and Wales

English law is the common law legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly criminal law and civil law, each branch having its own courts and procedures.

See also

Notes

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