Injunction in India

This article is written by K.Lasya Charitha pursuing BALLB in Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University, Visakhapatnam. In this article, the researcher discusses the meaning, types of Injunctions, and few case laws related to injunction.

INTRODUCTION

Any appeal to the courts without remedy is futile. Anyone who goes to court for past or current injuries must first make sure to exhaust their preferred relief measures of seeking damages. If the court grants redress by ordering a specific person or a group of people to do or refrain from doing something. This repair can take several forms. In the vast majority of tort claims, the plaintiff is seeking financial compensation (damage) for the damage suffered. This fact is emphasized in the distribution or redistribution of the loss. However, in many cases, the plaintiff tried to take injunctive measures to prevent future damage in that area.

Meaning of Injunction

An Injunction is an order given by the court restraining a specific person or a group of people from doing or not doing a specific act.

The Injunction is a discretion of the court, and failure to do so may lead to contempt of court. In the past, injunctions were given only when “when the remedy at law is inadequate”.

Illustration: Suppose you have a house surrounded by trees that are hundreds of years old, and your neighbor claims that these trees are their property and plans to cut them down. While the dispute is pending, the court can issue an order of Injunction prohibiting neighbors from cutting trees until the problem is fully resolved. Otherwise, it may cause irreparable damage to the land. Money loss cannot replace trees, and the loss you deserve may be speculative.

Types of Injunction

Injunctions are divided into two categories:

Based on the times period
Based on the nature of the order

Based on the Time Period

Temporary Injunction: A temporary injunction refers to a court order for a certain period of time, that is, until the next court order. Usually, injunctions are issued early in the legal proceedings and they are regulated by the code of civil procedure, 1908.

They are granted on the basis of a prima facie case without objection until the case is reviewed and a decision is made on the matter. For example, it may be necessary to prevent fraudulent confiscation or confiscation of property or illegal confiscation of the disputed property. This can help maintain the status quo.

Order 39 of the Civil Procedure Law contains rules for taking temporary injunctions and interlocutory measures.

Circumstances where temporary injunction can be ordered

(a) If it is determined by an affidavit or other means in any legal process-the property is at risk of waste, damage, or transfer by either party to the suit, or

(b) the defendant threatens or intends to take or dispose of Property to deceive its creditors.

(c) If the defendant threatens to deprive the plaintiff of any disputed property, the court may issue a temporary injunction or through its order to protect and prevent waste, damage, alienation, sale, removal, or sale of the property. This is the subject of a legal dispute. In a legal dispute, the court considers this appropriate until the court resolves the dispute or issues a new order.

Injunction to prevent recurrence or continued breach

In any action aimed at preventing the defendant from breaching the contract or any other form of any damage, regardless of whether the claim is seeking compensation, in any case, the plaintiff can, after the commencement of the proceedings and before or after the judgment, can seek an injunction from the court to prevent the defendant from committing a breach of contract, or similar violations from the same contract or related to the same property or rights. The court may issue an injunction, according to the validity period of its order to keep records, make a guarantee, or in any other manner determined by the court.

Permanent Injunction: Permanent Injunctions can only be made based on the decisions of the oral hearing and the merits of the claims. Therefore, the defendant is permanently prevented from the assertion of a right, or from engaging in acts that conflict with the rights of the plaintiff.

If the defendant infringes or threatens to infringe or use the plaintiff’s property rights, the court may give permanent injunction indefinitely under the following circumstances:

(a) the actual damage caused or likely to be caused by the aggression has not been determined

(b) If the intrusion is such that monetary compensation cannot provide sufficient relief;

Based on the Nature of the Order

Injunctions can be “prohibitory” or “mandatory”, the former prohibits any behavior and shall comply with the provisions of section 38, while the second requires the defendant to take specific actions described in section 39. If the defendant illegally built the separation wall by infringing on the plaintiff’s land and may continue to act further. The court can order to remove the wall with a mandatory injunction and not to construct the wall any further through a prohibitory injunction.

Prohibitory Injunctions: Permanent Injunction means preventing/prohibiting someone from taking any continuous actions contrary to the plaintiff’s normal use of land or other property. The maxim Status quo ante has been followed i.e., to make whole again someone whose rights have been violated.

Mandatory Injunctions: In rare cases, the court will issue a mandatory injunction. According to this mandatory injunction, the court orders or orders someone to do an act, that is, someone has done an act to cancel it, or if an act is not done then that act to be done. The court can order individuals/companies to do such acts.

The Mareva Injunction: The Mareva injunction issued in the Commonwealth jurisdiction is a court order to freeze assets so that the defendant in the lawsuit cannot dissolve his property outside the jurisdiction of the court to frustrate the judgment. It is named Mareva Companie Naviera SA v. International Bulkcarriers SA, decided in 1975, although the first case of judgment found in British case law was Nippon Yusen Kaisha v. Karageorgis in 1975, which was made shortly before Mareva’s judgment, but in the United Kingdom, the 1998 Civil Procedure Rules now define Mareva orders as “frozen orders”.

Circumstances of Granting and Refusing Injunctions

Granting Injunctions

If any property is in dispute, and the court considers the property to be in dangerous circumstances, or that either party may damage or waste the property.
The defendant threatened or intended to dispose of or remove the property.
The defendant’s infringement must be carried out in a way that monetary compensation cannot adequately be compensated.

Refusal of Injunctions

The court cannot issue an injunction prohibiting others from taking legal action.
They cannot issue an injunction restricting any person from applying to any legislative body.
An injunction cannot be issued to prevent someone from being prosecuted in criminal proceedings.
The court will not grant an injunction to the plaintiff, if the plaintiff is not in personal interest in the case.

Few Case Laws related to Injunction

M/S Hindustan Pencils Pvt .Ltd. vs. M/S India Stationery Products: In this case, the plaintiff put forward a suit for a permanent injunction on the grounds of trademark infringement and prayed against the defendants for the performance of accounts of profit decree. Together with this claim, a preventive application of 0.39 Rr. 1 and 2 was filed for a temporary injunction against the defendants to prevent them from violating the trademark. According to the plaintiffs, they used the Nataraj brand product dated October 27, 1972, which has a Nataraj device No.260466, involving all types of pencils, erasers, pens, and pencil refills, pencil sharpeners, ballpoint pens, pens paper clip in which were adopted in 1961 and Once registered, they continued to be valid subsisting trademark registration. They learned that the defendant had secretly registered the copyright, and the label was similar to the plaintiff’s identity label in the case of pins. After reviewing all aspects of the case, the court determined that the temporary injunction prohibits the defendant from using the illegal trademark â€˜NATARAJ’ and NATARAJ devices, or the plaintiff’s trademark registration numbers 260466 and 283730 for trademark infringement with respect to stationery and other office supplies.

Rohini Sharma &others vs. Sakuntala Devi and others: In this case, the court granted the applicant unilateral and temporary injunction, but these measures were overturned by the Court of First Instance. Therefore this appeal, If the court of the first instance makes a factual error in executing the preliminary court order. This is part of the ownership declaration, and the court has the power to issue a temporary injunction under Order 39, Articles 1 and 2, and even CCP Article 151. The relief was completely discretionary. The interim injunction requested by the complainant depends on a declaratory sentence during the prayer process. Finally, it has been determined that the right to restrict transfer and refuse to restrict can only be exercised in the manner prescribed by the company’s articles of association. This does not violate any provisions of the law or the company’s articles of association. It is also held that ex-parte injunctions can only be used in exceptional circumstances. It cannot be said that the discretion of the following courts was so wrong that it requested intervention at that time.

The Commissioner, Bangalore Development Authority, and Anr. vs. Brijesh Reddy and Anr: In this case, the High Court permitted the appeal filed by the defendant/plaintiff against the lower court’s decision. Therefore, this appellate court: When the proposed land is acquired during the land acquisition process, does the civil court have the power to rule on the claim? Is the High Court innocent to transfer the case to the first instance without reviewing any maintainability issues? By the time the acquisition process is complete, individuals who purchased the land cannot have any right to maintain the suit for injunction against the authority.

Haryana State Electricity Board vs. Hanuman Rice Mills and Others: There are two different lawsuits, and the compensation required in these two claims is different, because the first is a permanent injunction, and the second is a declaration and compensation of losses so that the Electrical Commission cannot ask for enforcement of contractual liability of the previous owner against the purchaser of the property. After a power outage, even if the same house is required to reconnect, it cannot be regarded as a consumer.

Conclusion

The grant of injunction is completely based upon the discretion of the court, and the court can consider various factors, such as expediency, the possibility of appropriate remedies, the behavior of the parties, and the ability to enforce judgments to approve or deny its application. The court can enforce certain actions by mandatory injunction. According to the injunctions, the court can order the demolition of illegal highway buildings or stop activities that cause inconvenience or prohibit the making of potentially defamatory statements. So, we can say that an injunction can be used as relief for claims under torts law as we have seen in the above examples that the court can issue an injunction in various civil matters.

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