Injunction is an order requiring a person or group of people to do, or not to do, something. A court issues an injunction only when it finds that money alone could not pay for the damage done or about to be done by an action. The court must believe that irreparable injury—an injury that could not be fixed—would happen if it did not order an injunction.
Here are two examples of cases where an injunction might be used: (1) If someone is imitating a trademark, the owner of the trademark could appeal to a court for an injunction ordering the other person to stop imitating it. (2) If someone plans to change the course of a stream that waters a farmer’s fields, the farmer could appeal to a court for an injunction ordering that person not to divert the stream. In these cases, money won in a court case after the fact would not restore the full value of the trademark or repay the farmer for the loss of a stream.
An order not to do an act is called a prohibitory injunction. An order to do an act is called a mandatory injunction. If the court must act swiftly, it may issue a temporary injunction, sometimes called a preliminary injunction, until it can hear the case. After it hears the case, the court may make the injunction permanent. Or it could remove the temporary injunction and refuse any further orders in the case.
