Knight v. Mitchell

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case the owner of a lot of ground next to a corner lot in Baltimore City sought an injunction to prevent the owner of the corner lot from building over a yard, up within two feet of the inside line of his property, as that would darken windows of the complainant’s house which have long overlooked the yard and received light across it. The two lots were formerly owned by a single owner, and the claim ¹⁰⁴ to continued enjoyment of the light for the inside lot is based upon the'principle applied by this court in Cherry v. Stein, 11 Md. 1 , Janes v. Jenkins, 34 Md. 1 , and other cases, that if an owner of united properties renders one part dependent upon another for light or other convenience and then sells off the dependent portion, he is presumed to grant with that portion the easement over the remaining portion upon which he made it depend. The injunction was denied and the bill of complaint dismissed, and the complainant appeals.

The lots are on the northwest corner of Eutaw Place and Robert Street, and the houses on them are numbered 1900 and 1902 Eutaw Place. On the same day, in 1883, Dwight D. Mallory acquired the corner lot, Ho. 1900, and his mother, Elizabeth D. Mallory, acquired the inside lot, Ho. 1902. And four years later, in 1887, during the same ownership, a house was built on each lot, but the two were connected with each other in some respects. An opening between the celllars gave access from one to the other, a like connection was made through a stable on the corner property, drainage from No. 1902 was carried over Ho. 1900, there was a common chimney and a continuous roof for the two houses, and there was a speaking tube across between the two on the second floors.

Otherwise the buildings were built as separate homes. They were built, however, as one building operation, upon plans of one and the same architect, who appears to have been employed by Mr. Mallory. The corner house, with its stable, was built along the whole length of its frontage on Robert Street, and its yard, varying from twenty-one to eighteen feet wide, was left open on the inside and rear of the lot. The house Ho. 1902 was built upon a plan, widely adopted for inside lots at t-he time, of leaving open a comparatively narrow yard along the side of the building back of the front rooms, and opening upon this one rear window from each of the front rooms .and windows in the side of all the rear rooms.

The width of the side yard in this instance varied: at the rear wall of the front room it was five feet two inches, narrowed to two feet two inches by a bay window projected from the rooms nest in the rear, then widened by ¹⁰⁵ a recess in. the wall to ten feet, then continued to the rear of the whole building with a width of over six feet. A solid fence seven feet high separated that yard from the yard of the corner lot, and, of course, the house on the inside lot had an outlook over the fence across the yard of the corner lot, and enjoyed an abundant light from the south by this arrangement of the two buildings. A passageway under the building Ho. 1902 was opened for the width of the side yard from the yard out to the front on Eutaw Place. The condition thus described has remained until the present time, except that, before the time of a sale of the inside lot to a predecessor of the complainant in title, Mr. Mallory, the owner of both lots, permanently blocked up the communicating door between the two cellars.

The two houses were owned separately by Mr. Mallory and his mother until the time of her death in 1892. Mr. Mallory then inherited a one-half interest in his mother’s property, and five years later, in 1891, he bought the remaining half from his brother, and then became owner of both lots in their entirety. In 1919 he sold the lot Ho. 1902 to William Sauer and others, predecessors