## Facts

- Post Oak Gardens was a platted subdivision in Harris County, Texas, consisting of 49 tracts (about 4 to 7.81 acres each) subject to recorded restrictive covenants.
- A key covenant limited each tract to “residence purposes only.”
- R. E. Cowling and roughly seventeen other lot owners sued as a class of subdivision property owners to enforce the residential-use covenant.
- Mrs. R. M. Colligan owned Tract No. 2, located at the subdivision’s edge, with minimal improvements (a small removable pipe-storage building).
- Property outside the subdivision, not subject to the covenants, had developed commercial uses along a roadway that had become a heavily traveled thoroughfare.
- Several restricted tracts within the subdivision had churches, and other tracts had been sold to church bodies intending to build.
- Colligan sought to use Tract No. 2 for business/commercial purposes.
- The trial court found the tract’s market value was about $10,000 per acre as restricted and about $35,000–$43,000 per acre if unrestricted.

## Issues

1. Whether equity may relieve an individual edge lot from a subdivision-wide “residence purposes only” restriction based on changed conditions in the vicinity when the restriction remains generally valid and not abandoned.
2. Whether churches and similar institutional uses on restricted lots, and commercial development outside the subdivision, constitute waiver/abandonment or otherwise defeat enforcement against commercial use.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Texas reversed the judgment that removed Tract No. 2 from the restrictions and remanded with instructions to grant injunctive relief.
- The Court agreed the residential-use covenant remained valid, subsisting, and enforceable and had not been waived, breached, or abandoned so as to be unenforceable.
- The Court held the trial court erred in concluding that changed conditions made it unjust or inequitable to enforce the covenant against Tract No. 2.
- The Court directed entry of an injunction restraining Colligan from using Tract No. 2 for business or commercial purposes.

## Legal Principles

- Restrictive covenants are enforceable in equity unless violations are so substantial that an ordinary observer would reasonably conclude the restrictions have been abandoned or waived.
- A court may deny equitable enforcement due to changed conditions only when changes inside the restricted area or in its surroundings make it no longer possible to secure, to a substantial degree, the benefit the restriction was intended to provide.
- Noncommercial institutional uses (such as churches) on lots restricted to residential purposes do not, by themselves, show abandonment of the restriction so as to permit business or commercial uses.
- Commercial development outside a restricted subdivision and increased traffic on an adjoining road do not, without more, justify exempting a boundary lot from a uniform residential scheme when the restriction still provides substantial benefit to the other owners.
- Equitable discretion in enforcing restrictions is constrained by these governing standards; economic gain from lifting a restriction does not alone warrant relief.

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court required enforcement of a subdivision’s residential-use covenant against an edge-lot owner, holding that nearby outside commercial growth and the presence of churches within the restricted area did not establish abandonment or changed conditions sufficient to deny injunctive relief for commercial use.


Cowling v. Colligan, 312 S.W.2d 943 (Tex. 1958)