Injunctions & urgent applications

When something has to be stopped today — how emergency court orders work, and what the first 24 hours demand

Some problems cannot wait for the ordinary pace of litigation: money about to leave the country, confidential information about to be published, a business about to be destroyed by a departing employee. An injunction is the court’s emergency brake — an order requiring someone to stop doing something, or to do something, now. They are among the most powerful remedies the law offers, and among the most demanding to obtain. This note explains how they work and what the first day requires. It is general information, not advice on your situation.

What an injunction actually is

An injunction is a court order directed at a person, backed by the court’s power to punish breach as a contempt of court — which can mean a fine, seizure of assets, or imprisonment. That is what gives it teeth. Injunctions come in a few forms:

—Prohibitory — ordering someone to stop (the most common): stop publishing, stop trading, stop trespassing.
—Mandatory — ordering a positive step: deliver up documents, take down material, restore access. Courts grant these more cautiously.
—Interim — granted early to hold the position until trial. Most emergency applications are for interim relief.
—Final — granted at the end of a case as the permanent remedy.

Speed, and the price of it

Applications are made on notice where there is time to warn the other side, or without notice (still often called ex parte) where warning them would defeat the purpose — because they would move the money, destroy the documents, or publish first. Without-notice relief is exceptional, and it comes with a heavy obligation.

On a without-notice application you owe the court a duty of full and frank disclosure — you must put forward not only your own case but every material point the absent party would have made against you. Get this wrong and the order can be discharged for that failure alone, with costs, regardless of the merits. It is the single most common reason urgent injunctions are later set aside.

What the court weighs

For most interim injunctions the court applies the American Cyanamid framework, in three steps:

Is there a serious question to be tried?

A relatively low bar — the claim must not be frivolous or vexatious. The court does not decide who will win at this stage.

Would damages be an adequate remedy?

If money at trial would properly compensate you, an injunction is usually refused. Injunctions are for harm that cannot be undone or measured — lost confidentiality, a destroyed business, irreversible acts.

Where does the balance of convenience lie?

The court weighs the risk of injustice each way — the harm to you if it refuses against the harm to the other side if it grants and you later lose — and leans towards preserving the status quo.

The price of interim relief is the cross-undertaking in damages: you must promise the court that if the injunction is later found to have been wrongly granted, you will compensate the other side for the loss it caused. It is a real, sometimes substantial exposure — you are putting your own money behind your certainty.

The orders people most often need in a hurry

Freezing orders

To stop a defendant dissipating or removing assets before you can enforce a judgment. Draconian, tightly policed, and requiring a real risk of dissipation and full disclosure.

Confidence & restraint of trade

To stop publication of confidential information, or a departing employee or partner soliciting clients, poaching staff or misusing data in breach of covenant — where speed is everything before the damage is done.

Trespass, nuisance & property

To remove an encroachment, stop unlawful occupation, or restrain works — including interim possession orders against trespassers.

Protection of people

Non-molestation and occupation orders, and harassment injunctions, where someone’s safety or peace is at risk. These carry their own urgent procedures and, often, powers of arrest.

The first 24 hours

If you may need an injunction, the work is intense and immediate. Assemble the evidence in a sworn witness statement with the key documents exhibited — the court acts on what it can read, now. Be ready to give the cross-undertaking. Prepare a draft order setting out precisely what you want stopped, in terms specific enough to be obeyed and enforced. And instruct counsel early: much of the value is a clear-eyed view of whether the application will actually succeed — and whether the cheaper step of a firm undertaking from the other side would achieve the same thing without the risk.

Sometimes the strongest move is not the application itself but the credible threat of it: a well-evidenced letter demanding an undertaking — a binding promise to the same effect as an order — can achieve overnight what a contested hearing would take weeks and thousands to secure. Knowing which situation you are in is the whole skill.

Where we come in

Urgent work is where senior advocacy earns its keep — reading the papers, forming a hard view on the merits, drafting the order and the evidence, and being on your feet in front of the judge, often at very short notice. Where an injunction is the right tool we move at the pace it demands; where it is not, we tell you so before you take on the cost and the cross-undertaking. Each stage is a defined piece of work at a fee discussed up front.

This note is general information about injunctions and urgent applications in England and Wales and does not constitute advice on a particular matter. Urgent relief turns entirely on its facts and timing; take advice immediately if you may need it.

Barraj Legal — a trading style of Rhys Johns, a barrister authorised & regulated by the Bar Standards Board. Sophia House, 28 Cathedral Road, Cardiff CF11 9LJ