Also known as: easement in gross · easements in gross · gross easement
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A nonpossessory interest in land authorizing a limited use or enjoyment that benefits a particular person or entity rather than any dominant parcel. Commercial easements in gross are freely alienable. Their alienability when noncommercial depends on the manner and terms of creation. Acquisition of a fee interest in the servient land extinguishes the easement to the extent the fee owner can make the same uses.
Great Lakes Steel holds a recorded commercial easement in gross across neighboring land allowing it to run pipelines for its manufacturing operations. Great Lakes Steel sells the easement to Griffin Industries for continued industrial use. The buyer may enforce the easement against the servient owner because the interest is alienable as a commercial easement in gross.
Greenleaf Farms holds an easement in gross permitting truck access across a ranch for crop deliveries. Greenleaf Farms later buys fee title to the narrow access strip on the ranch but not the surrounding land. The easement is extinguished only over the purchased strip because fee ownership now authorizes the same uses there.
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Golden Gate Logistics possesses a commercial easement in gross for rail spur access to its warehouse. The easement grant contains a restraint against assignment without consent. Golden Gate Logistics may still convey the interest subject to that restraint because commercial easements in gross are subject to the same alienability limits as estates of like duration.
Gerald Gibson receives a noncommercial easement in gross allowing personal fishing access across a private lake. The creating deed states the right is personal to Gerald Gibson and nontransferable. The easement cannot be assigned to another person because its alienability is controlled by the express terms of creation.
Commercial easements in gross are alienable property interests. Noncommercial easements in gross have alienability determined by the manner or terms of their creation.
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Yes. The easement is extinguished to the extent the owner acquires an estate in the servient tenement and can make the same uses authorized by the easement through that ownership.
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Yes. A commercial easement in gross may be subjected to all restrictions on alienability that apply to an estate in land of like duration.
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The alienability of a noncommercial easement in gross is determined by the manner or the terms of its creation, including any express limitations or the personal relations between the parties at creation.
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…in the panel opinion, and a dissent from denied rehearing en banc argued that the regulation appropriated a traditional easement in gross and therefore constituted a per se taking. This Court granted certiorari. II A The Takings Clause provides: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just…