court order

SILVAMAN

What are the mechanics of getting a court order to prevent something occurring until a judge can hear both sides of the story and adjudicate? How fast can it be done and how long until the court will hear the case?

Dravokivich

You can always look to submit "an emergency" order. Or at least that's how it was put by my solicitor at the time, when approaching the family courts for an issue. To be honest I think you'll get a better answer if you can find someone to discuss the actual issue at hand. Vague questions are always hard to answer. Especially when legal issues are down to specific criteria.

Peregrinus

It can be done extremely fast indeed, if the need is there. I've known it to be done in a matter of hours, but 24-48 hours is probably mroe common.

How long until the court hears the case depends on what exactly has been stopped by the interim injunction and how great the damage/inconvenience to someone that comes from it being stopped. But once an interim injunction has been granted things generally move along at a fairly snappy pace, unless and until the interim injunction is discharged, when normal service resumes.

As to the mechanics, these are for your lawyer to worry about rather than you. Pleadings must be drafted, and an affidavit must be sworn setting out the facts which show that there is an issue to be tried and that in the meantime an interim injunction is needed to stop some dreadful thing happening. Your case will need to show that you can't let the dreadful thing happen and then seek damages - that the kind of injury you will suffer if this happens can't be remedied with mere money. Then you need to line up a judge and a registrar for an emergency hearing.

It's ruinously expensive. You've got a bunch of highly paid lawyers who are putting all other work aside and spending all their hours, day and night, working on this matter for you. They need to be paid, and then some. Plus there's the occupational injuries compensation you have to pay when they staple their fingers together while trying to assemble the papers in the taxi on the way to the judge's house. Plus, to get your interim injunction you will usually need to give the court an undertaking as to damages - meaning, if you get an order to stop somebody doing something, and some other person (not necessarily the person against whom the order is made) suffers loss as a result, you will abide by whatever order the court makes about the payment of compensation to that person. If, in the first instance, you get your interim injunction ex parte (meaning, that you haven't even told him you are seeking it and the first he hears is when he is told the court has ordered him to stop doing whatever it is) then there's be another hearing within a few days in which the court will hear both parties, and the order may be discharged at that point, or continued. But, the point is, the extra hearing all adds to the expense.