## Facts

- Charles Clayton conveyed a tract of land to his sister, Gracie Alft.
- Paragraph 3 of the deed granted Alft “the right of ingress and egress over a dam and the Charles Clayton driveway” to connect the conveyed tract with a road.
- Paragraph 4 of the same deed granted Gracie and her husband, Harold, a right to use a nearby lake, but stated that the lake-use right was personal to the grantees and could not be leased, assigned, or otherwise conveyed.
- After the conveyance, Alft sought to sell the tract.
- Clayton informed potential purchasers that he would not allow them to use the dam/driveway route to reach the road.
- Alft filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that the Paragraph 3 ingress/egress right was an easement appurtenant that would pass with title to later owners.
- Clayton argued that the Paragraph 3 access right was a personal easement in gross limited to Alft (and therefore not transferable).
- The trial court ruled for Alft, declaring the Paragraph 3 right an easement appurtenant.
- Clayton appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the deed’s grant of “the right of ingress and egress over a dam and the Charles Clayton driveway” created an easement appurtenant that runs with the conveyed land, or instead created a personal easement in gross that cannot be conveyed to successors.
2. Whether extrinsic evidence of the grantor’s claimed intent was admissible to change the legal effect of the deed’s access clause.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Tennessee affirmed the trial court’s declaratory judgment.
- The court held that the Paragraph 3 right of ingress and egress over the dam and driveway is an easement appurtenant benefiting the conveyed tract and transferable to subsequent owners.
- The court rejected reliance on parol evidence to recast the access right as personal where the deed’s language was not ambiguous.

## Legal Principles

- When deed language can fairly be read to create an easement appurtenant, courts construe the easement as appurtenant rather than in gross.
- A deed that is not ambiguous is interpreted from the instrument itself; parol evidence is not admitted to contradict or add terms that change the deed’s legal operation.
- The deed is read as a whole, and differences in drafting within the same instrument can show intent: an express “personal, non-assignable” clause for one right supports treating a separate, unrestricted access grant as appurtenant.
- Standard granting language in an access clause (including language of conveyance) supports treating the right as tied to the land conveyed, especially when the right functions to provide access from the tract to a public road.

## Conclusion

The appellate court affirmed a declaration that the deed’s grant of ingress and egress over the dam and Clayton’s driveway was an easement appurtenant running with Alft’s tract, and it refused to allow extrinsic evidence to convert that recorded, unqualified access right into a personal privilege when the deed, read as a whole (including its separate expressly personal lake-use clause), showed no such limitation.


Alft v. Clayton, 1995 WL 412876 (1995)