Leech v Schweder (1874) 9 Ch App 463; 38 JP 612; 43 LJ Ch 487; 22 WR 633; 30 LT 586
EASEMENT, RIGHT TO LIGHT, COVENANT, QUIET ENJOYMENT, INJUNCTION, NATURE OF EASEMENT, PROOF OF DAMAGE
Facts
The plaintiffs occupied a warehouse and premises. The land on which the warehouse had been built was demised to W.H. by the Skinners Company through a lease for a term of 80 years as of March 1865. The premises were expressly demised “by all lights easements, advantages, and appurtenances” and the indenture for the lease contained a covenant by the company that the lessee had the right to peacefully enjoy the property without disturbance. In August 1868, with the consent of the Skinners Company, W.H. demised the property to the plaintiffs on the same terms. The rooms in the basement, ground floor and first floor of the plaintiffs’ warehouse, were lighted by a skylight in the roof of the building. The defendant took the land adjoining the plaintiffs’ property under an agreement for a lease from the Skinners Company and started erecting a building. In doing so, he erected a party-wall between his premises and the plaintiffs’ warehouse above the height to which it had been built by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant obstructed the light coming to the skylight and the back windows of their property. An injunction was granted to the plaintiffs which prevented the defendant from erecting and permitting to remain of the wall. He appealed this injunction.
Issues
(1) Is there any difference in the right of an owner of land to the ordinary easement of light depending on where he acquired it through 20 years’ user or by grant of the owner of the servient tenement?
(2) Did the presence of a covenant for quiet enjoyment enlarge the right of the covenantee, so as to entitle him to an injunction in equity?
Decision/Outcome
(1) There is no difference in the right of an owner of land to the ordinary easement of light whether he acquired it through 20 years’ user or by grant of the owner of the servient tenement.
(2) A covenant for quiet enjoyment of premises does not enlarge the right of the covenantee, so as to entitle him to an injunction in equity where the damage is not sufficient to enable the covenantee to maintain an action at law.
(3) If, however, the right to light is not an ordinary easement, but a special right, created by the covenant, an injunction should be granted without reference to the amount of damage.
Updated 20 March 2026
This article accurately summarises the Court of Appeal in Chancery’s decision in Leech v Schweder (1874) 9 Ch App 463. The legal principles stated remain good law and have not been overturned. The case continues to be cited as authority for the proposition that the nature of an easement of light is the same whether acquired by long user (under what is now the Prescription Act 1832) or by express grant, and that a covenant for quiet enjoyment does not of itself expand a covenantee’s remedial rights beyond what the substantive law of easements would otherwise allow.
Readers should note that the broader law of easements of light has developed significantly since 1874. In particular, the Rights of Light Act 1959 introduced a mechanism allowing landowners to register a notional obstruction to light as a deemed interruption for prescriptive purposes, affecting claims based on long user. The leading modern authority on the quantum of obstruction required to constitute an actionable interference with a right to light remains Colls v Home and Colonial Stores Ltd [1904] AC 179 (HL). More recently, the Supreme Court addressed the availability of injunctive relief versus damages in Coventry v Lawrence [2014] UKSC 13, which revisited the Shelfer principles governing when a court will award damages in lieu of an injunction in nuisance and related contexts, including rights of light cases. This article does not address those later developments, which are material to a full understanding of the current law in this area.
