Lawyer Listings Add, Update, or Remove Listings

Injunction and Temporary Restraining Order

The court orders that require a party to do or stop doing something rather than pay money - the three stages (temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, permanent injunction), the four-factor test for emergency relief, the bond the applicant must post, how an order is enforced through contempt, and why a violated order is obeyed first and challenged second.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

An injunction is a court order directing a person to do a specified act or, far more often, to refrain from one: to stop selling a product, using a trade secret, cutting down the trees, transferring the money, or contacting the plaintiff. It is an equitable remedy, available only where money damages would not adequately compensate the harm, and it comes in three stages that track the life of a case. A temporary restraining order is emergency relief granted for a short period to preserve the status quo until a hearing can be held, and in a true emergency it can issue without notice to the other side if the applicant shows specific facts of immediate and irreparable injury and certifies what efforts were made to give notice. A preliminary injunction is granted after notice and a hearing and lasts until the case is decided. A permanent injunction is part of the final judgment after the plaintiff has actually won.

The test for the first two stages is the same four-part inquiry. The applicant must show a likelihood of success on the merits; that irreparable harm - harm that cannot be undone by a later award of money - is likely without the order; that the balance of hardships between the parties favours relief; and that the public interest is not disserved. Courts weigh the factors rather than ticking boxes, but likelihood of success and irreparable harm are indispensable, and a delay in seeking relief undercuts the claim of urgency. Because a preliminary order is granted on an incomplete record and may turn out to have been wrong, the applicant must ordinarily post security - a bond in an amount the court sets - to pay the damages the restrained party suffers if the injunction is later found to have been wrongly issued; the bond amount often caps that recovery. The order must state its reasons, its terms specifically, and the acts restrained in reasonable detail, and it binds the parties, their officers and agents, and anyone who acts in concert with them and has actual notice.

An injunction is enforced by contempt: a party who disobeys can be fined, ordered to pay the other side's losses and fees, or in a civil contempt jailed until they comply, and the order must be obeyed while it stands even if the party believes it is wrong - the remedy for a bad order is a motion to modify or dissolve it, or an appeal, not self-help. Orders granting or denying a preliminary injunction are among the few interlocutory rulings that can be appealed at once, and a party can ask the trial court or the appellate court to stay the order pending appeal. A permanent injunction is also subject to later modification when the facts or the law have changed. Restraining orders in domestic-violence and harassment cases are a distinct statutory species with their own summary procedure, and orders freezing assets before judgment are available only within limits the law of each jurisdiction sets.

Where this comes from

In federal court the rule is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65: temporary restraining orders at 65(b), preliminary injunctions at 65(a), security at 65(c), the contents and scope of the order at 65(d); the four-factor test is Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008), and the requirement that a permanent injunction be justified by the same equitable showing is eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006). Interlocutory appeal is 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), and the duty to obey an order until it is set aside is Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307 (1967). The limit on pre-judgment asset freezes in aid of a money claim is Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U.S. 308 (1999). Modification of a consent decree or injunction on changed circumstances is Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367 (1992). State practice follows each state's rules of civil procedure and equity statutes; the duration of a temporary restraining order and the bond rules are fixed by those rules and are not stated here.

When people hire a lawyer for this

Emergency relief is the situation in which having a lawyer already matters most, because a temporary restraining order can be sought and granted within a day and the papers - a verified complaint, declarations proving irreparable harm, a proposed order, a bond - have to be right the first time. A person served with a restraining order or injunction must comply immediately and should get counsel to move to dissolve or modify it and to be heard at the preliminary-injunction hearing, which is often the moment the whole case is effectively decided. Businesses that rely on non-compete, non-disclosure or exclusivity agreements should understand that their value lies almost entirely in the ability to enforce them by injunction, and should plan the proof of irreparable harm before there is a breach.

Find a lawyer for this in your state

Choose your state. Each link opens the directory page for the city in that state with the most currently published law firms in this practice area; a +n beside the city is how many other cities in the state also have one. The list is generated when this page loads, so a state whose listings have lapsed drops out rather than becoming a dead link.

« All glossary terms

Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.