An Interlocutory injunction is an injunction intended to preserve the rights of one party to litigation until the formal hearing of the matter. An interlocutory injunction is taken out to stop something but only temporarily.
Factors, which will be taken into account before this injunction is taken out, are:
- Strength of the plaintiff’s case
- Irreparable harm suffered if injunction is not granted
- Balance of convenience; look at the burdens and the conveniences.
One example of what I have found is American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd (1975)
“Quia Timet” (because you fear). A Quia Timet injunction is an injunction granted against a defendant because of threatening behaviour on their part. This injunction is used to prevent people going near others who fear them. An example of this would be if a man was beating his wife then an injunction could be taken out to prevent him from going near to her.
Many of Quia Timet injunctions are not granted because:
- The case could be mostly speculative
- There may be not proof, this is hard to obtain
- No harm has occurred.
Some of these reasons are seen in Day Vs. Brownrigg (1878) when someone was being stalked, but the person has not said anything to the other person and there is no physical proof then this would be a hard case to get an injunction for.
The injunction Public Interest stops something to protect the public.
We can see that in the case Attorney General v Harris. Harris was charged with 237 counts of violating his licence. He had an injunction to stop him breaking the law. The story of this case is Harris was violating the law because he did not have a permit to sell alcohol after a certain time, however he kept violating this because it was cheaper to pay the fine, so he would pay the fine each time. The public interest injunction stopped this from happening in the end as it was affecting the public.
The Anton Piller Order is an injunction; this entitles the person to get a search warrant.
The reason it is called Anton Piller is that Anton Piller wanted to go into a factory, which he believed was copying his product. These injunctions are rarely granted, as they are intrusive and the order is against a person not a company. The Anton Piller case is used in the cases where the court believes there is a danger that the person will remove or destroy evidence in the form of documents or movable property such as money, papers or illegal copies of film. The defendant is only required to allow the plaintiff to carry out a look of the property.
The Mareva Order is when the third persons assets are frozen. The Mareva injunction stopped the boat in the Mareva v International bulk carrier’s case from leaving the port. The factors, which have to be taken into consideration before applying for a Mareva injunction, are that there is a high risk that the goods are going to disappear. An example of this is if the ship was booked into another port in a few days time.
