86 A.D.2d 723 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1982
Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court at Special Term (Lee, Jr., J.), entered May 6, 1981 in Chenango County, which partially granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint. Plaintiffs, in connection with the purchase of a 40-acre tract of land adjacent to realty owned by defendants, allegedly entered into an oral contract whereby defendants agreed to give plaintiffs a “right of way” across defendants’ land so as to provide plaintiffs with access to their new property. In exchange for this “right of way”, plaintiffs allegedly agreed to permit defendants to graze their cattle on the 40-acre tract and to hire defendant Edgar Blood to supervise the construction of a cabin to be built on plaintiffs’ property. Plaintiffs purchased the property in March, 1979. Thereafter, in August of 1980, defendant Edgar Blood commenced an action against plaintiffs for breach of contract, essentially alleging that plaintiffs owed him money for work he had done in constructing plaintiffs’ log cabin. At about the same time, defendants denied plaintiffs the use of the “right of way” across their land. In response to that suit, plaintiffs instituted the present action setting forth five causes of action. Defendants moved to dismiss the second, third, fourth and fifth causes of action on the ground that they failed to state a cause of action (CPLR 3211, subd [a], par 7) or, alternatively, that they