Wiggins Ferry Co. v. Ohio & Mississippi Railway

Citations

• 94 Ill. 83

Syllabus

<p>1. Conveyance—of the estate granted. A deed to a railway company conveying no land, but only the right to construct, maintain and use, in, through, upon and over certain lands, all such railroad tracks, depots, warehouses, etc., as the company should find necessary or convenient for transacting its business, and to keep thereon, without disturbance, all property belonging to or in the possession of the company, to have and to hold the said rights and easements so long as the same should be used for such purposes, and for no other, even forever, passes only an easement which is a freehold of inheritance, though only a bare or qualified fee, which may be defeated.</p> <p>2. A grantee may take a fee in any kind of hereditament, either corporeal or incorporeal; but there is this distinction between the two species: that a man is seized in his demesne as of fee of a corporeal hereditament, while of an incorporeal hereditament he can only be said to be seized as of fee, and not in his demesne, which means property in the thing itself.</p> <p>3. Estate—base or qualified fee. A base or qualified fee is such as has a qualification subjoined thereto, and which must be determined whenever the qualification annexed to it is at an end. It is a fee, because it may possibly endure forever; and it is base or qualified, because its duration depends upon collateral circumstances which qualify and debase the purity of the donation.</p> <p>4. Covenants—when they run with the land. A covenant runs with the land when either the liability for, its performance or the right to enforce it passes to the assignee of the land itself. In order that the covenant may run with the land, its performance or non-performance must affect the nature, quality or value of the property demised, independent of collateral circumstances, or it must affect the mode of enjoyment, and there must be a privity between the contracting parties.</p> <p>5. Where the relation of tenure is created by a grant, all the