## Facts

- A local authority approved a builder’s application to lay out a new street under statutory street-planning powers, conditioned on the builder executing a deed restricting building on two reserved strips intended for future roadway continuation.
- The builder covenanted for himself and those claiming under him not to erect buildings or other structures on the reserved land without the authority’s written consent and to give notice of the restriction in later dealings.
- The authority owned no land capable of benefiting from the restriction; its asserted benefit was public and regulatory (street layout and continuity).
- The builder later conveyed and mortgaged interests in the land; subsequent holders took with notice of the restriction.
- Structures (houses on one strip and a wall on the other) were constructed in breach of the restriction.
- The authority sued for a mandatory injunction requiring removal of the structures and for damages.

## Issues

1. Whether a restrictive covenant can bind successors in title to the burdened land when the covenantee has no land that benefits from the restriction.
2. Whether the restriction could be treated as enforceable against successors (despite notice) under equitable enforcement of negative covenants, or instead was only a personal obligation of the original covenantor.
3. Whether characterizing the restriction as analogous to a negative easement implied a requirement of dominant land and barred enforcement “in gross.”

## Decision

- The appellate court refused to enforce the restriction against subsequent owners/encumbrancers, despite their notice, because the covenantee had no benefitted land.
- The court left the original covenantor personally liable on the covenant as between the original parties.
- The authority’s request for successor-targeted injunctive relief (including demolition) failed for lack of a dominant tenement to which the covenant’s benefit could attach.

## Legal Principles

- Equitable enforcement of a restrictive covenant against successors requires that the covenantee own land benefited by the restriction (a dominant tenement); a purely public or regulatory interest is insufficient.
- Notice to successors of the restriction does not, by itself, supply the missing requirement of benefitted land or make an “in gross” restriction enforceable against them.
- Where no benefitted land exists, the covenant operates as a personal contractual obligation against the original covenantor, not as a restriction binding successors in equity.

## Conclusion

A restrictive covenant cannot run in equity to bind successors in title unless it benefits land owned by the covenantee; without such dominant land, the covenant is unenforceable against later owners even with notice, though it remains enforceable personally against the original covenantor.


London Cnty. Council v. Allen, [1914] 3 K.B. 642 (C.A.)