RUNNING WITH THE LAND

RUNNING WITH THE LAND. A technical expression applied to covenants real, 
which affect the land; and if a lessee covenants that he and his assigns 
will repair the house demised, or pay a ground-rent, and the lessee grants 
over the term, and the assignee does not repair the house or pay the ground-
rent, an action lies against the assignee at common law, because this 
covenant runs with the land. Bro. Covenant, 32 Rolle's Ab. 522; Bac. Ab. 
Covenant, E 4. 
     2. The same principle which regulates the annexation of incorporeal to 
corporeal property, determines what covenants may be annexed to a tenure. 
Those alone which tend directly, not merely through the intervention of 
collateral causes, to improve the estate, give stability to the tenant's 
title, assure him, from a defective one, or add to the lord's means on the 
one hand, the tenant's on the other, of enforcing the stipulations between 
them, are of this sort. Cro. Eliz. 617; Cro. Jac. 125; 2 H. Bl. 133 T. 
Jones, 144; Cro. Car. 137, 503. 
     3. Covenants running with the land pass with the tenure, though not 
made with assigns. The parties to them are not A and B, but the tenant and 
the landlord in those characters. When the landlord assigns the reversion, 
the assignee becomes lord in his room, fills the precise situation and 
character the assignor was clothed with, and is therefore entitled to the 
privileges annexed to that character. Whether the tenant is sued by the 
landlord or his assigns, be is sued by the same person, namely, his lord. 
The same argument, changing its terms, applies to the tenant's assignee. 5 
Co. 24; Cro. Eliz. 552; 3 Mod. 538; 10 Mod. 152; 12 Mod. 371. 
     4. To make a covenant run with the land, it is not requisite that the 
covenantor should be possessed of any estate; be may be an entire stranger 
to the land, but the covenantee must have some transferable interest in it, 
to which the covenant can attach itself, for otherwise the covenant is 
merely personal. Co. Litt. 385 a; 3 T. R. 393; 2 Sc. 630 2 Bing. N. S. 411. 
And to make the assignee liable, he must take the estate the covenantee had 
in the land, and no other, for when he takes another and a different estate 
in the same land, he cannot sue upon the covenants. 6 East, 289. Vide 
Breach; Covenant. 
     5. A covenant running with the land passes to the heir at law, on the 
death of the ancestor, whether the heir be named in such covenant or not. 2 
Lev. 92; 2 Saund. 367 a. Vide Covenant.