The resolution of this case depends upon the classification of the lift facilities as either real property or personal property. This decision is necessarily peremptory, because the facilities are perhaps truly neither, or a little of both. The requirements of such classification has presented such an acute problem in the law, that a special subgrouping has accumulated its own identity as a device to determine which side of the arbitrary boundary between chattels and real estate the nature of a given object places it. This is the law of fixtures. Fixtures are usually classed as real estate; trade fixtures, an exception to the rule, are usually classed as personal property.
When a scheme of classification is used to serve more than one purpose, internal conflicts frequently develop. The object of classification is to define categories so that like objects invariably fall into the same class. But 'likeness' may vary as the purpose for classification varies. The incentive to class an object as either real estate or chattel for tax purposes may call for a result contrary to that arrived at when done in the context of a bailment.
However, in First National Bank v. Nativi certain tests for resolving the classification of things as real or personal property have been set out as general rules: (1) the annexation, actual or constructive, of the article to the real estate; (2) its adaptation to the use of the realty to which it is annexed; and (3) whether or not the annexation has been made with the intention to make it a permanent accession to the freehold. By applying these tests in the first instance, we can decide what the character of the property at issue is under the law generally, without the pressures brought to that determination by possible tax consequences or the identity of the parties.