PREFACE. THE great increase in the last few years of cases upon 'the Law of Window Lights, and the large and growing proportion of those cases which is brought before courts of equity, are, I trust, a sufficient excuse for a new and further treatise on the subject, written from the point of view of the equity practitioner. Perhaps a word of introduction is necessary with regard to the Appendix of Conveyancing Forms. Those who are conversant with this subject know that there are hardly any precedents of assurances by which the right to window lights may be granted or released. The explanation of this is most probably to be found in the small commercial value of this privilege till within a very short time. But since the demand for new and enlarged buildings within the confined areas of our great towns, and especially within the limits of the city of London, has caused a great increase of the height of buildings, the right to window lights has now in many instances become of very considerable pecuniary value. And in this state of things, I believe that the absence of forms of assurance for dealing with the right has been the cause of much expense and litigation, as the price of the privilege has been generally settled by resort to a court of law or equity. I should, however, have felt much diffidence in submitting these precedents to the profession, had they not been subjected to the revision of one of our most accurate con veyancers. I have only to add my grateful acknowledgments to those friends to whose assistance I have been indebted in the composition of this treatise-to Mr. T. C. Wright, for his help in the preparation of the Appendix of Conveyancing Forms; to Mr. H. F. Bristowe, for access to the shorthand notes of several cases not then in print, one of the most important of which never has been reported; and to a friend on the South Wales circuit for the materials of the section as to the remedy by action at law. No one can have studied any subject connected with the law of easements without being under great obligations to Mr. Gale and the editors of his admirable work; but I have not hesitated to express my dissent from some few of his conclusions, which seem to me at variance with the principles of our law or with more recent decisions of our courts. 5, OLD SQUARE, LINCOLN'S INN, January, 1867. CONTENTS. Light and air are res communes; no permanent property can be Respective rights of the owners of two adjoining pieces of land Invasion of privacy is no legal injury But each may build upon the margin of his property The owner of land may lose his natural right in this behalf (2). View from the outside of objects within a window (3). Common law right to receive air free from pollution This was only presumptive proof, from which the evidence of a grant was implied absolute and indefeasible after enjoyment for twenty years 24 Conditions which must be complied with in order that the enjoy- Claim to a right to light and air, although the claimant has no Of the Acquisition of the Right by express Agreement. Controversy as to whether an easement can at law be created by Result-it can only be created by deed But equity will restrain persons, who by express agreement or by tacit acquiescence have induced others to incur expense, from depriving them of the benefit of that expense by insisting on the Instances of the application of this rule to the case of easements.. No particular form of words is necessary to constitute a grant Express grants of the right to window lights are not to be met with Of the Acquisition of the Right by implied Agreement. |