Estate of Thomson v. Wade
New York Court of Appeals
509 N.E.2d 309 (N.Y. 1987)
When Nobel conveyed the annex parcel to a third party, he never granted it an express easement over the adjoining parcel, but when he separately conveyed that adjoining parcel, he attempted to reserve a right-of-way for himself and for the annex parcel's owner — even though the annex parcel's owner was a stranger to that second deed; after acquiring both the annex parcel (as Thomson, plaintiff) and the separate right-of-way interest originally retained by Nobel and passed to the Nobel Foundation, Thomson sought a declaratory judgment establishing an express easement across the adjoining parcel now owned by Wade (defendant), who sought to bar the increased traffic Thomson's new motel generated.
Whether, when a grantor specifies in a deed that a third party who is a stranger to the deed has an easement on property, the third party has a valid easement on the property.