## Facts

- A landowner planned a resubdivision featuring a proposed road (“Roblaine Street”) from a highway to a bayou, but the subdivision plan was ultimately rejected.
- Buyers agreed to purchase two interior lots identified by reference to the proposed subdivision and conditioned the purchase on the seller granting a perpetual servitude to use the proposed road for ingress and egress.
- The executed act of sale conveyed the lots but did not grant or mention any servitude, did not attach the referenced survey, and misstated the plot number in the description.
- The lot fronting the highway was sold to a third party under a different survey that did not show the proposed road.
- The buyers nevertheless used the route corresponding to the proposed road across adjacent land to reach the highway.
- The seller later conveyed the tract containing the access route to his son, who fenced the route and prohibited the buyers’ use.
- By the time of the dispute, the buyers had acquired additional property providing an alternate connection to a public highway, though less convenient.

## Issues

1. Whether the buyers had a conventional predial servitude of passage enforceable against the seller’s son based on an unrecorded promise in the purchase agreement that was omitted from the act of sale.
2. Whether the buyers were entitled to a legal servitude of passage (forced passage) across the son’s land as owners of an enclosed estate.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the denial of relief.
- The court held no conventional servitude of passage was created and enforceable against the son because the act of sale did not grant the servitude and the public records did not disclose it.
- The court held the buyers were not entitled to a forced passage across the son’s land because the estate did not qualify as an enclosed estate under the governing requirements, including as reflected in the public records, and the buyers had alternate access to a public road.

## Legal Principles

- A conventional predial servitude is a real right that must be created in proper form; to affect third persons, it must appear in the public records.
- A subsequent purchaser may rely on the public records and is not bound by an unrecorded agreement or promise of servitude not reflected in recorded title instruments.
- A legal servitude of passage is limited to owners of an enclosed estate lacking access to a public road; it is not granted merely to obtain a more convenient route where other access exists.

## Conclusion

The court refused to impose either a conventional or legal right-of-way across the son’s property because no servitude was properly created or recorded to bind a third party, and the buyers failed to show a legally enclosed estate warranting a forced passage.


Dallas v. Farrington, 490 So. 2d 265 (La. 1986)