Columbia Hills Corp. v. Mercantile-Safe Deposit & Trust Co.

Marbury, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. On this appeal, appellant raises two questions as to why this Court should reverse a decree of the Circuit Court for Howard County, dated June 29, 1962, which enjoined the appellant from interfering with or preventing the use of an easement for a right-of-way and which required the appellant to promptly rebuild and open the entrance from Columbia Pike, the present U. S-Route 29, to the right-of-way. These questions which we must answer are: (1) was the appellant chargeable with notice of am unrecorded easement and plat, and (2) if the answer to (1) is in the affirmative, should not the injunctions have been denied because they subject the appellant to great injury and afford the appellee comparatively little benefit. Appellee is trustee for certain land lying off Columbia Pike in Howard County.

There has been in existence since 1849 a. right-of-way, created by deed in that year, from this tract across the land now owned by the appellant to Columbia Pike. In early 1950, in the process of reconstructing Columbia Pike, the State Roads Commission relocated the entrance to the right-of-way by agreement with appellee and the life tenant of the trust property, and in furtherance of the project, the Commission obtained for appellee a new easement for the relocated entrance from the owners of the servient land, Dr. and Mrs. George B. Sybert. This easement was shown on State Roads Commission plat No. 8532. However, the grant and the plat of the new easement was not recorded by the Commission until December 26, 1957.

In October 1954, appellant acquired from Mrs. Sybert, then a widow, the servient property, which it then began to subdivide and develop. In the process, it constructed a two-way entrance onto Columbia Pike. This entrance consisted of curbing, ornamental stone monument, and a grass plot. The work was completed in June 1955, and formal permission for this entrance was issued by the Commission in February 1956. ³⁸¹ The construction of the entranceway resulted in a total destruction of the relocated entrance to the right-of-way to appellee’s property.

This entrance had been used by the residents of the trust property since 1950, as a means of ingress and egress until it was destroyed. The residents of the trust property had been required to use a makeshift entrance from their right-of-way out to Columbia Pike. A bill of complaint for declaratory decree was filed February 14, 1961, by appellee, requesting an adjudication of the respective rights of the parties, under the provisions of Code (1957), Article 31 A, the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act, and asking for injunctive relief, which was subsequently granted by Judge Macgill in a decree filed June 29, 1962, after a full hearing of the case. In contending that the first question should be answered in the negative, it claims that although to give constructive notice of an easement, the grant of the right-of-way must be recorded pursuant to Code (1957), Article 21, § 1, but concedes that if the purchaser of the servient tenement had actual notice