Also known as: sasines · seisin
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The feudal delivery of possession of land by which an estate was created or transferred without a writing until the Statute of Frauds. Livery of seisin required physical acts symbolizing transfer of the land interest.
Simone Sanders conveyed land to Sterling Manufacturing by general warranty deed containing the covenant of seisin. After closing Sterling discovered a prior recorded easement that impaired title. Sterling sued Sanders for breach of the covenant of seisin and recovered damages measured by the cost to clear the encumbrance.
Stella Shapiro hunted a fox on open land and was about to seize it when Simon Stern killed and carried it away. Shapiro sued Stern claiming her pursuit gave her sasine-like possession. The court held that pursuit alone did not establish the required possession for a property claim.
Lodowick Post was in possession of dogs and hounds under his command. Upon wild and uninhabited waste land called the beach, he found and started one of those noxious beasts called a fox. Post then hunted, chased, and pursued the fox with his dogs and hounds while the animal remained in view. Pierson, well knowing that the fox was so hunted and pursued, killed and carried it off in the sight of Post to prevent his catching the same. Post commenced an action of trespass on the case against Pierson in a justice's court. The declaration set forth these facts, and a verdict was rendered for Post as the plaintiff below. Pierson sued out a certiorari directed to one of the justices of Queens county. The cause came before the court on the return to the certiorari. The proceedings presented the question of whether Post had acquired a property right in the fox sufficient to maintain the action against Pierson for killing and taking it away.
View caseSabrina Shah and Sophia Singh held land as joint tenants. Shah executed a deed purporting to convey her interest to herself as tenant in common. Singh challenged the deed claiming it failed to transfer sasine properly. The court upheld the severance because the deed effectively transferred the interest.
Mr. and Mrs. Riddle purchased a parcel of real estate, taking title as joint tenants. Several months before her death, Mrs. Riddle retained an attorney to plan her estate. After reviewing pertinent documents, he advised her that the property was held in joint tenancy and that, upon her death, the property would pass to her husband. Distressed upon learning this, she requested that the joint tenancy be terminated so that she could dispose of her interest by will. As a result, the attorney prepared a grant deed whereby Mrs. Riddle granted to herself an undivided one-half interest in the subject property. The document also provided that “The purpose of this Grant Deed is to terminate those joint tenancies formerly existing between the Grantor, Frances P. Riddle, and Jack C. Riddle, her husband. ...” He also prepared a will disposing of Mrs. Riddle’s interest in the property. Both the grant deed and will were executed on December 8, 1975. Mrs. Riddle died 20 days later. The trial court refused to sanction her plan to sever the joint tenancy and quieted title to the property in her husband. The executrix of the will of Frances Riddle appeals from that judgment.
View caseThe state legislature granted land to Sterling Dynamics by statute. A later legislature repealed the grant and claimed the original conveyance lacked proper sasine transfer. Fletcher sued to quiet title asserting the initial grant conveyed valid sasine that could not be revoked.
The suit was instituted on several covenants contained in a deed made by John Peck, the defendant in error, conveying to Robert Fletcher, the plaintiff in error, certain lands which were part of a large purchase made by James Gunn and others, in the year 1795, from the state of Georgia. The contract for which was made in the form of a bill passed by the legislature of that state. The first count set forth a breach in the covenant that the legislature of the state of Georgia at the time of passing the act of sale had good right to sell and dispose of the same in manner pointed out by the said act. The second count assigned as a breach that the original grantees had promised and assured members of the legislature an interest in the lands if they voted for the bill. The third count alleged that a subsequent legislature passed an act annulling and rescinding the law under which the conveyance to the original grantees was made. The fourth count assigned as a breach that the right to the soil was in the United States and not in Georgia. In the circuit court there were demurrers to three pleas and a special verdict found on an issue joined on the fourth plea. The pleas were all sustained and judgment was rendered for the defendant. After the opinion of the court was delivered on the initial demurrers, the parties agreed to amend the pleadings and the cause was continued for further consideration. The special verdict found the grant of Carolina by Charles the second to the Earl of Clarendon and others. It found the subsequent erection of Georgia as a colony. It found the surrender of the grantees to the crown in 1752. It found the appointment of governors with commissions describing the boundaries. It found the 1763 proclamation creating new colonies and reserving lands on the western waters for the use of the Indians. It found the 1787 convention between South Carolina and Georgia settling their boundary line. The verdict described the situation of the lands in such manner that their lying within the limits of Georgia as defined in the proclamation of 1763, in the treaty of peace, and in the convention between that state and South Carolina has not been questioned. The case comes before this court on the amended pleadings consisting of sundry demurrers and the special verdict.
View caseThe United States conducted frequent low flights over Skylar Sullivan's chicken farm rendering the land unusable. Sullivan claimed the flights constituted a taking of sasine in the airspace above the property. The Court held that the interference with use established a compensable taking of the land interest.
Respondents Thomas Lee Causby and his wife purchased 2.8 acres of land near an airport outside Greensboro, North Carolina in 1934. The property included a dwelling house and outbuildings used for raising chickens. The end of the airport's northwest-southeast runway was 2,220 feet from the barn and 2,275 feet from the house, and the glide path passed over the property at 83 feet above the ground. In April 1942 the airport was taken over by the Greensboro-High Point Municipal Airport Authority. In May 1942 the United States leased the airport for military operations beginning June 1, 1942, with the lease renewable until 1967 or the end of the national emergency. Military planes including four-motored heavy bombers used the northwest-southeast runway about four percent of the time for takeoffs and seven percent for landings, frequently flying low over the Causbys' land and buildings. The flights caused the chickens to become frightened, resulting in the loss of approximately 150 birds that flew into walls, a decline in egg production, and the eventual destruction of the commercial chicken business. The noise and glare from the planes also deprived the family of sleep and caused them to become nervous and frightened. Although no accidents occurred on the property, several happened nearby. The Causbys brought suit in the Court of Claims, which found that their property had depreciated in value due to the flights and entered judgment for them in the amount of $2,000. The Supreme Court granted a petition for a writ of certiorari to consider the case.
View caseMartin claimed land under a grant from Lord Fairfax while Hunter's Lessee asserted title under a later state conveyance. The dispute turned on whether the original grant transferred valid sasine that survived the change in sovereignty. The Court held that the federal treaty confirmed the earlier sasine and superior title.
In April 1791 an action of ejectment was commenced in a Virginia district court held at Winchester for recovery of land within the Northern Neck tract. Denny Fairfax, a British subject holding under the devise of Thomas Lord Fairfax, was admitted to defend upon the usual terms of confessing lease, entry and ouster. The facts were reduced to a case agreed and treated as a special verdict. On 24 April 1794 the district court entered judgment for the defendant. The plaintiff appealed to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, the highest court of law in the state. At its April term in 1810 that court reversed the district court judgment and entered judgment for the plaintiff. The case was then removed into the Supreme Court of the United States. At February term 1813 the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals judgment and issued a mandate directing that its judgment be carried into execution. The Court of Appeals unanimously declined to obey the mandate. It entered judgment declaring that the Supreme Court's appellate power did not extend to it under the Constitution, that section 25 of the Judiciary Act was not in pursuance of the Constitution, that the writ of error had been improvidently allowed, and that proceedings in the Supreme Court were coram non judice. A second writ of error was brought to the Supreme Court. The underlying facts agreed by the parties show that Lord Fairfax, a citizen and inhabitant of Virginia, died in December 1781 seized of approximately 300,000 acres in the Northern Neck. By his will he devised the lands in fee to his nephew Denny Martin, later Denny Fairfax, a native-born British subject who resided in England until his death between 1796 and 1803 and who never became a citizen of the United States. In 1789 the Governor of Virginia issued a patent granting a portion of the land, described as waste and ungranted and never escheated, to David Hunter, a Virginia citizen, pursuant to a treasury warrant dated 23 January 1788. The case agreed also incorporates the definitive treaty of peace of 1783, the treaty of amity of 1794, and the several Virginia statutes concerning land grants and escheats.
View caseThe covenant of seisin promises that the grantor holds good title and the right to convey the property at the time of the deed. It is breached if any outstanding claim or encumbrance exists at conveyance. The covenant runs with the land and supports later claims by the grantee.
Supporting sources
A special warranty deed warrants title only against claims arising by through or under the grantor. A general warranty deed includes the covenant of seisin and other title covenants that protect against all defects regardless of when they arose.
Supporting sources
No. The covenant of seisin provides absolute assurance against encumbrances existing at conveyance. Constructive notice from recording does not relieve the grantor of liability under the covenant in a general warranty deed.
Supporting sources
…present, through waste and unoccupied lands, which must inevitably and speedily have terminated in corporal possession or bodily seisin, confers such a right to the object of it as to make any one a wrongdoer who shall interfere and shoulder the spoil. The justice's judgment ought, therefore, in my opinion, to be affirmed.