Tulk v Moxhay

Tulk v Moxhay is a landmark English land law case that decided that in certain cases a restrictive covenant can "run with the land" (i.e. a future owner will be subject to the restriction) in equity. It is the reason Leicester Square exists today.
On the face of it disavowing that covenants can "run with the land" so as to avoid the strict common law former definition of "running with the land", the case has been explained by the Supreme Court of Canada, in 1950 as "Covenants enforceable under the rule of "Tulk v Moxhay", are properly conceived as running with the land in equity" which summarises how the case has been interpreted and applied in decisions across common law jurisdictions.
Facts.
In 1808, Charles Augustus Tulk, the owner of several parcels of land in Leicester Square, sold one of the plots to another person who made a covenant to keep the Garden Square "uncovered with buildings" such that it would remain a pleasure ground. Over the following years the land was sold several times over (passed through successive owners), eventually to the defendant in a contract which did not recite (nor expressly stipulate) the covenant.
The defendant, who was aware of the covenant at the time of purchase (had actual or constructive knowledge), refused to abide by the covenant as he claimed he was not in privity of contract and so was not bound by it.
Judgment.
Lord Cottenham LC found in favour of the plaintiff and granted an injunction to restrain the defendant from violating the covenant. The Court noted that if the agreement had been a contract instead of a covenant, it would have been enforceable. Therefore the covenant was enforceable at equity, that is, when the plaintiff seeks an injunction as opposed to damages. The case stands for the proposition that a vertical (landlord-tenant) relation (privity of estate) is not needed for the burden of a covenant to run at equity.
The case approved earlier decisions of the Vice-Chancellor, "Whatman v. Gibson" 9 196 and "Schreiber v. Creed" 10 Sim. 35.
Significance.
Prior to this case, for covenants to run, that is for the covenantee to take enforcement action or obtain damages against a breach, the breach and covenant had to be one of two classes:
After the case, instead of the first narrow privity of estate, any restrictive covenant chiefly needed satisfy four lesser requirements to bind the successors in title:
The old vertical privity rules remain (as later slightly amended) in respect of positive covenants (stipulations requiring someone to do an action).
The extent of the rule was described in 1950 by Rand J of the Supreme Court of Canada in "Noble v Alley" as follows:
And in the next paragraph distinguished from any application to the terms and circumstances of the covenant in question in that case: