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Property Law - Lecture 6 (Part 2) - Servitudes
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Lecture notes for property law with case descriptions. Author achieved a first-class grade in the module.
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Lecture 6 (Part 2) – ServitudesWhat is a servitude?
" a burden on land or houses, imposed by agreement - express or implied - in favour of the owners of
other tenements, whereby the owner of the burdened or "servient" tenement, and his heirs and
singular successors in the subject, must submit to certain uses to be exercised by the owner of the
other or "dominant" tenement, or must suffer restraint in his own use and occupation of the property"
per Bell, Principles, 979
Two pieces of heritable property referred to as tenements, one of which has a benefit attached to it,
the dominant tenement and the other which has the obligation, the burdened or servient tenement.
Servitudes always talking about neighbouring property whereby one neighbour is required to allow
the other neighbour some sort of right over the servient or burdened property land.
Servitudes
Servitudes are praedial – run with the land, attached to the land. The benefited proprietor is
entitled to exercise servitude over burdened property no matter the ownership of the
burdened property. Change of ownership of the tenement does not effect the validity.
affect heritable property
right must be exercised civiliter – means civilly, in good faith, the benefited proprietor should
not take undue advantage in terms of the use of the servitude over the burdened property.
right only to be used for benefit of dominant tenement, not some other property:
Irvine Knitters v North Ayrshire Co-op.Soc. Ltd. 1978 SC 109
The co-op acquired adjacent plots of land in Irvine. They knocked down the existing buildings
on the two plots of land and built a department store across the plots. A lane, which was
owned by the pursuers, ran behind the plot of land which were acquired by the co-op and
there was a servitude in existence over the lane which allowed for the owners of one of the
plots that the co-op had bought to use it as access to their building. The pursuers owned the
lane and they had granted a servitude over the lane to allow access to one of the two plots
that the co-op had bought. Once the new department store was built, the co-op drove vehicles
down the whole length of the lane, not just the part which the pursuers had granted a
servitude. The pursuers went to court and asked the court to interdict the defenders from
using the lane at all, not even in relation to the part which had been granted.
The court did not go that far, but they said that the defenders could only use the part of the
lane which had been granted and no further than that. Both sides came out with something,
the pursuers got an interdict against the co-op going any further down the lane.
, Rules on the exercise of servitude rights
Change in the use of the dominant tenement does not of itself increase the burden.
Carstairs v Spence 1924 SC 380
The defender had a servitude right of access to take his cart along the pursuers track which
went to the defender’s market garden. The action concerned the extent of the right of
servitude that the defender had as to whether he could only take cart traffic down this track
in relation to garden market.
The court said he had a wider use, he could take his cart down the track for whatever purpose,
that did not increase the burden on the pursuers and thus was acceptable.
A change in the type of traffic in servitudes of way may increase the burden
Kerr v Brown 1939 SC 140
The defenders had a servitude right that they could discharge scourings (dishwater) onto the
burdened property. They then went ahead and built a more significant drainage pipe which
would take more significant waste than simply scourings. This pipe they built into the
pursuer’s property, the defender’s argument was that they had a right to discharge waste
material onto the pursuers property, so the pipe was merely an exercise of that servitude
right.
The court said no, that exceeds your right. Your right is to discharge scourings that anything
more substantial than scourings is beyond what you are allowed to do and so the pipe built
for this purpose is actually an encroachment onto the pursuers land. It had to be removed as
an encroachment.
Whether increased use increases the burden depends on its degree
Alba Homes Ltd. v Duell 1993 SLT(Sh.Ct.) 49
Involved a servitude right to access along a lane which went past the pursuer’s property. The
pursuers raised an action against that servitude right being extended to allow access to a
second property which was being built close to the first property. Potentially increasing usage
of the lane form the owners of the first property, doubling so it serves for both properties.
They did not want that to happen so went to court to try and avoid that from happening.
The court said that having potentially one more person use the track to get to their property
was not such a significant increase in the burden over the lane as to make it acceptable.
Classification of Servitudes
Positive/Negative
It has not been possible to create new negative servitudes since 28 th November 2004.
Negative servitudes which existed on that day were converted into real burdens and
will continue only until 2014.
Positive servitudes are servitudes which allow the benefited proprietor some right
over the burdened property.
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