Peck v. Hartshorn
| Citation | 75 N.E. 133,189 Mass. 110 |
| Parties | PECK v. HARTSHORN. |
| Decision Date | 11 September 1905 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
Edgar O. Achorn, for plaintiff.
Frank O. White, for defendant.
The plaintiff owns a house and lot in Winthrop, and the defendant owns an adjoining lot. This is a bill in equity by the plaintiff to prevent the defendant from erecting a private stable upon her lot. The plaintiff and defendant both bought from the Winthrop Shore Land Company, a voluntary association operating under a deed of trust to develop and sell an extensive tract of land in Winthrop. The plaintiff relies upon certain restrictions inserted in her deed and in the defendant's deed, which the master finds were inserted by the common grantor for the benefit of these two and other lots, pursuant to a general scheme of development of the land, and that 'the owner of each lot has, as appurtenant to his lot, a right in the nature of an easement upon the other lots, which he may enforce in equity in case the owners of the other lots violate the restrictions.' The restriction relied on is that 'no building shall be erected upon the granted premises to cost less than $2,500, and but one building, one private stable excepted, shall be erected or placed thereon.' The defendant has begun the erection of a stable on the rest of her lot as an adjunct to her dwelling house situated upon another lot on the opposite side of the street; and the master finds that, though as originally planned the stable was to cost about $1,600, if finished as begun, with all the additions and improvements enumerated in the defendant's latest testimony and statement of her intentions, it will cost at least $2,500. There is no finding that she does not intend to proceed in good faith according to the latest announcement of her intentions. Unless therefore, a stable by itself is not a building within the meaning of the restriction, or a stable cannot be built except in connection with or as an adjunct to a dwelling house or other building on the same lot, which are the plaintiff's contentions, it would seem to follow that the decree of the superior court overruling the plaintiff's exceptions to the master's report, and enjoining the defendant from erecting any stable on the lot at a cost less than $2,500, should be affirmed.
We think that the decree was right. The word 'building' is used several times in the...
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