Tulk v Moxhay

Over the following years the land was sold several times over (passed through successive owners), eventually to the defendant, Edward Moxhay, in a contract which did not recite (nor expressly stipulate) the covenant.

Lord Cottenham LC found in favour of the plaintiff and granted an injunction to restrain the defendant from violating the covenant.

The case stands for the proposition that a vertical (landlord-tenant) relation (privity of estate) is not needed for the burden of a covenant to run at equity.

That the question does not depend on whether the covenant runs with the land is evident from this, that if there was a mere assignment and no covenant, this Court would enforce it against a party purchasing with notice of it; for if an equity is attached to the property by the owner, no one purchasing with notice of that equity can stand in a different situation from the party from whom he purchased.The case approved earlier decisions of the Vice-Chancellor, Whatman v. Gibson 9 Sim.

In that sense, it is a relation between parcels, annexed to them and, subject to the equitable rule of notice, passing with them both as to benefit and burden in transmissions by operation of law as well as by act of the parties.