Temporary Injunctions and Interim Orders

In one line

A temporary injunction is an order made while the suit is still running which stops a party doing something, so that the subject matter of the dispute still exists when the court finally decides it.

Why the Code allows it

A suit takes years, and the defendant keeps possession of the property throughout. If he can cut down the trees, sell the land, or demolish the building while the case is pending, the plaintiff may win a decree about something that no longer exists.

So the court is given power to freeze the position. But the plaintiff has proved nothing yet, and an injunction can be as damaging to an innocent defendant as the threatened act would be to the plaintiff. The Code therefore hedges the power: notice before granting, reasons if notice is dispensed with, a thirty-day clock, compensation for a wrongly obtained injunction, and attachment and imprisonment for disobeying one.

Section 94(c) is the enabling provision: in order to prevent the ends of justice from being defeated, the Court may, if so prescribed, grant a temporary injunction and, in case of disobedience, commit the person guilty of it to civil prison and order that his property be attached and sold.

Section 95 is the counterweight, and it is dealt with at the end of this chapter.

When a temporary injunction may be granted: Rule 1

Rule 1: where in any suit it is proved by affidavit or otherwise:

(a) that any property in dispute in a suit is in danger of being wasted, damaged or alienated by any party to the suit, or wrongfully sold in execution of a decree, or (b) that the defendant threatens, or intends, to remove or dispose of his property with a view to defrauding his creditors, or (c) that the defendant threatens to dispossess the plaintiff or otherwise cause injury to the plaintiff in relation to any property in dispute in the suit,

the Court may by order grant a temporary injunction to restrain such act, or make such other order for the purpose of staying and preventing the wasting, damaging, alienation, sale, removal or disposition of the property, or dispossession of the plaintiff or other injury to him in relation to property in dispute, as the Court thinks fit, until the disposal of the suit or until further orders.

Three grounds, and it is worth noticing what they have in common and how they differ.

Clauses (a) and (c) are about property in dispute in the suit. Clause (b) is not: it is about the defendant's own property, and it is aimed at a defendant putting his assets beyond the reach of creditors. Clause (b) therefore overlaps with attachment before judgment under Order XXXVIII Rule 5, and the difference is that clause (b) restrains, while Order XXXVIII attaches. See [Attachment before Judgment].