Court Opinion

ID: 9827851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:53:33.377731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:37.914672
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In its motion for rehearing appellee insists that our opinion is in direct conflict with the decison of the Supreme Court of this state in Railway v. Smith, 72 Tex. 122, 9 S. W. 865, 2 L. R. A. 281, and referred to and from which we quoted in the opinion.
In writing the opinion we made a very careful study of that case, and the references made to it by text-writers, in stating examples of personal covenants as distinguished from specific covenants of title regarded as real or running with the land. The courts are not uniform in their holdings as to whether a stipulation in a contract or deed for right of way to construct and maintain a fence is purely personal as between the parties themselves, or is a covenant affecting realty and running with the land and vest in point of benefit and liability in 'an assignee, or party, holding in privity of interest in the realty.
 The basic rule for the interpretation of a covenant contained in a deed is to gather the intention of the parties from the'words used, by reading, not simply a single clause used in the instrument, but the entire context, and where the meaning is doubtful by considering such surrounding circumstances, as the parties are presumed to have considered when their minds met in executing the instrument. Of course, unless the deed to the right of way has some element of a covenant which runs with the land, it cannot be made the basis of the action.
We think we need not enter into an extensive discussion as to the distinction between real and personal covenants, more theu to say that those covenants which are held to run with the land and inure to the benefit of the assignee are such as generally affect the land itself and confer a benefit on the grantor. 7 R. C. L. p. 1104, par. 20, and note 18. See, also, other definitions and distinctions between real and personal covenants, 15 C. J. p. 1220 et seq.
As said by Judge Hobby in Railway v. Smith, supra, they are such covenants as affected the land itself and conferred a benefit on the grantor. It is said in 7 R. C. L. at page 1110, par. 26, that covenants as to water, ditches, build levees, or drains, and to maintain them, generally run with the land. See, also, 2 Devlin on Deeds (2d Ed.) par. 940, p. 1296. We see no reason why an agreement that a flume will be constructed and maintained across the canal of a water company, so that the water from another water district flowing in appellant’s intake ditches may pass through to said land beyond, should not be a covenant that runs with the land.
It seems to us quite evident that the clause in the deed for the right of way that the appellee water district in building its canal over and across the land in question, thus dividing it into two parts, should construct and maintain a passageway for the water thereby to get to one of the parts of the land, otherwise cut off from the use of the water for irrigation, is a covenant running with the land granted. There seems to us no element of a personal use of the water to Biggs, but the use of the flume was for the benefit of Biggs’ land referred to in the agreement, and has every element of a real covenant.
The motion is overruled.