Diocese of Trenton v. Toman

70 A. 606, 74 N.J. Eq. 702, 4 Buchanan 702, 1908 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 61
CourtNew Jersey Court of Chancery
DecidedJune 22, 1908
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 70 A. 606 (Diocese of Trenton v. Toman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Jersey Court of Chancery primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Diocese of Trenton v. Toman, 70 A. 606, 74 N.J. Eq. 702, 4 Buchanan 702, 1908 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 61 (N.J. Ct. App. 1908).

Opinion

Walker, V. C.

The complaipant’s bill prays for an injunction restraining the defendants, the Toman brothers, from using the alleyway between the lands of the complainant, No. 136 North Warren street, and the lands of the bath company, No. 132 North Warren street, as a passageway for automobiles entering or leaying their garage building, through which, admittedly, they have the right of ingress, egress and regress over the alleyway for horse-drawn vehicles in connection with their lot in the rear of the bath company’s premises, and which was formerly a part of the same lot.

The first and second grounds upon which the complainant rests its claim to an injunction are really one, and may be succinctly stated as follows: Because the defendants have a right of way only through the alleyway as appurtenant to their lot in the rear of No. 132 North Warren street for carriages drawn by horses.

If, as urged, the defendants have no right to use the alleyway for vehicles which enter their garage through the alley on the south side of their property, No. 130 North Warren street, they are, by so using it, subjecting the servient tenement, namely, the alleyway, to an additional and unauthorized burden, which is illegal and should be restrained. That the law is with the complainant on this question seems to me to be perfectly well settled by a long line of decisions both in England and in this country.

In Allan v. Gomme, 11 Adolph. & E. 759, it was held that a conveyance to A of certain premises reserving a right of way and passage over the locus in quo to a stable and loft in the same and a space or opening under the loft, to be used in common by both occupiers as tenants thereof had been accustomed to theretofore use them, that the reservation did not authorize B, who afterwards built a cottage on the site under the loft, to use the passage as a way to the cottage.

[708]*708Lawton v. Ward, 1 Ld. Raym. 75, holds that under a right of way to a particular place a man cannot justify going beyond that place.

Colchester v. Roberts, 4 Mees. & W. 769, involved a question of pleading, but Baron Parke observed (at p. 773) : “A license, therefore, to use a way to and from Black Acre,- would not have included permission to go to or come from beyond.

One of the older cases, and probably the leading one in England upon this question, is that of Howell v. King, 1 Mod. 190, which was in trespass for driving cattle over the plaintiff’s ground. It was thus reported:

“The case was: A has a way over B’s ground to Black Acre, and drives his beasts over B’s ground to Black Acre and then to another place lying beyond Black Acre. And whether this was lawful or no, was the question upon a demurrer. It was urged that when his beasts were at Black Acre he might drive them whither he would. Roll. 391 Nu. 40, 11 H. IV. 82; Brook, tit. Chimin. On the other side it was said that by this means the defendant might purchase a hundred or a thousand acres adjoining to Black Acre, to which he prescribes to have a way: By which means the plaintiff would lose the benefit of his land: and that a prescription presupposed a grant, and ought to be continued according to the intent of its original creation. The whole court is agreed to this. And judgment was given to the plaintiff.”

Davenport v. Lamson, 21 Pick. 72, was this: By the partition of a farm the right of passing and repassing across an eight-acre lot, belonging to the plaintiff, became appurtenant to a three-acre lot belonging to the defendant, who also owned a nine-acre lot which was beyond the three-acre lot, but was adjacent to and not separated from it by any fence. The defendant having-loaded his cart with produce taken in part from each of his lots passed with it from the three-acre lot over the plaintiff’s close,- and it was held that the defendant had no right to use the way as a way from the nine-acre lot, although, in so doing, he passed last from his three-acre lot onto the plaintiff’s close, and that trespass would lie for such abuse of the defendant’s right.

In Evans v. Dana, 7 R. I. 306, it was held that an express grant of the right of access to and to take water from a well in close No. 1, as appurtenant to close No. 4, confers no such right upon close No. 3 adjoining, because not the same ownership as [709]*709No. 4, as to authorize the owner to pass through his close, No. 4, to the well, and take water therefrom for the use of his close, No. 3. The court observed: In regard to the right claimed to exist as appurtenant to close No. 3, to take water from the plaintiff’s well over and across No. 4, it is sufficient to say that an easement is a burden upon the servient, and a right only in the dominant estate, and when created and declared by an express grant, cannot be extended beyond its plain language or clear intent. The easement appurtenant to close No. 4 confers, therefore, no rights upon close No. 3, and it makes no difference that they are now owned by the same party. Evans v. Dana, 7 R. I. 311.

A right of way appurtenant to a lot cannot be used for the purposes and benefit of another lot to which no such right is attached, even though some other lot be adjoining and within the same enclosure with that to which the easement belongs. Farley v. Bryant, 32 Me. 474. See, also, Albert v. Thomas, 73 Md. 182; French v. Marstin, 32 N. H. 316; Webber v. Vogel, 159 Pa. 235; Greenmount Cemetery Company’s Appeal, 4 Atl. Rep. 529 (Supreme Court, Pennsylvania); Coleman’s Appeal, 62 Pa. St. 252; Shroder v. Brenneman, 23 Pa. St. 348; In re Private Road, 1 Ashm. (Pa.) 417; Greene v. Canny, 137 Mass. 64; Brightman v. Chapin, 15 R. I. 166; Shaver v. Edgell, 48 W. Va. 502; Springer v. McIntire, 9 W. Va. 196; Reise v. Enos, 76 Wis. 634; Stearns v. Mullen, 4 Gray 151.

In the case of Shroder v. Brenneman, ubi supra, the supreme court of Pennsylvania remarked that the rule is stated in Howell v. King and runs through the subsequent cases, and that if the law were not so the owner of the close to which the right is appurtenant might purchase an indefinite number of adjoining acres and annex the right to them, by which the grantor of the way might be entirely deprived of the benefit of his land, a reason which applies with all its force to a private alley like that in respect to which the suit (Shroder v. Brenneman) was brought.

The case of French v. Marstin, ubi supra, was this: M owned what he called his “mountain pasture,” consisting of the Bean, the Brown and the Scheafe lots. He contended that he had the right of way to this pasture over the land of E, but there was no [710]*710evidence that he had any such right to the Brown and Scheafe lots. It was held that notwithstanding he might have the right to cross the lands of E to go to the Bean lot, and notwithstanding the three lots might all be embraced in one pasture, he could not extend the right to the other lots, and that in crossing the land of E to go to the “mountain pasture” he would be a trespasser, and that E would have the right to use sufficient force to prevent his crossing. In this case (French v. Marstin) the supreme court of New Hampshire remarked (at p. 329)

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Bluebook (online)
70 A. 606, 74 N.J. Eq. 702, 4 Buchanan 702, 1908 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 61, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/diocese-of-trenton-v-toman-njch-1908.