Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

168 Mass. 484

Brown v. O'Brien

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1897-05-22

Bill in equity, filed June 4,1896, to restrain the defendant from the violation of the covenants of a mortgage deed. The case was submitted to the Superior Court, and, after a decree for the plaintiff, to this dourt, on appeal, upon agreed facts, in substance as follows. On September 13,1890, Sarah E. Lawrence was the owner in fee of the land shown as lots B, C, D, E, and F, on the subjoined plan.

Relies on Ladd v. City of Boston · Hogan v. Barry · Ober v. Brooks

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-05-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1971

3 state decisions

10189719001910192019301940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Allen, J.

¶1Where an independent covenant is inserted in a mortgage, it does not necessarily expire with the payment and discharge of the mortgage, but it is a matter of construction whether it was intended to survive the mortgage or not. Ober v. Brooks, 162 Mass. 102. Green v. Low, 22 Beav. 625. In the present case, it is quite clear that the covenant was intended to survive. The debt secured by the mortgage was payable in five years. The mortgagor covenanted with the grantee and her heirs and assigns that no building or part of a building should be erected upon the granted premises for five years from the date of the mortgage, and that no building or part of a building erected thereafter upon the granted premises should be more *488than two stories in height, and that these covenants should be binding upon and available to heirs and assigns, and run with the land for the benefit of the adjoining land of the grantee; and in the condition it was further provided that, upon payment and other performance by the grantor, the deed, with the exception of the covenants above recited, should be void. This clearly shows an intention that the operation of the covenants should not cease with the discharge of the mortgage.

¶2The covenant that the land should not be used for buildings of over a certain height was in effect the grant of an easement in favor of the adjoining premises, the violation of which by the defendant was rightly restrained. Chase v. Walker, 167 Mass. 293. Ladd v. Boston, 151 Mass. 585. Hogan v. Barry, 143 Mass. 538.

¶3Decree affirmed.

/168/mass/484 · .json · Public domain