Easement.

Easement. In English law, a person may have rights of several kinds in the land of another. He may have the right to take or receive part of the produce or profit of the land; this right is called a Profit. He may have the right to use his neighbour's land for his own convenience (as e.g. by making use of a road over it, by laying out nets to dry upon it, &c.), and this kind of right is called a Positive Easement. Again, he may have the right to prevent his neighbour from making an inconvenient use of the land—e.g. the right to prevent him from erecting buildings which obstruct the light—and this kind of right is called a Negative Easement. An easement can only be enjoyed by an owner and occupier of land; the property in respect of which the right is enjoyed is called the dominant tenement; the property over which it is enjoyed is called the servient tenement. Profits and easements are both regarded as rights of property in land; they are 'incorporeal hereditaments.' Easements are of many kinds; they include rights of way, rights to water, light, and air, rights to support from neighbouring land, rights to transmit the vapours and noises of an offensive trade, &c. They are acquired by express or implied grant (as when a house is conveyed together with a right of way), and also by prescription and custom; they may be extinguished by express or implied release and in other ways. The period of enjoyment which gives a good title is for an easement 20 years and for a profit 40. The American law on this subject is in its general principles the same as the English. In the Roman and Scotch law, profits and easements are both included under the title of Servitudes (q.v.). See C. J. Gale, Treatise on the Law of Easements (6th ed. 1888).