Injunction to Prevent in UK Law

The power given is to award damages to the party injured, either in addition to or in substitution for an injunction. If no injury has yet been sustained the damages will be solely in respect of the damage to be sustained in the future by injuries which the injunction, if granted, would have prevented.

However it must be remembered that the grant of an interlocutory injunction is a discretionary remedy that should be available to prevent injustice. But if the claimant has a cause of action to protect a property right recognised by the law, there is no reason in principle why the court should not grant an interlocutory injunction to protect that right, even if damages are not recoverable.

Nevertheless, even in the latter case, the power of the English court to grant the injunction exists, if the bringing of the suit in the foreign court is in the circumstances so unconscionable that in accordance with our principles of a "wide and flexible" equity it can be seen to be an infringement of an equitable right of the applicant. This equitable right not to be sued abroad arises only if the inequity is such that the English court must intervene to prevent injustice.

What, with great respect to those who think otherwise, I do regard as quite unarguable is the proposition, advanced by the Court of Appeal itself but disclaimed by both parties to the action: that if such a contravention of Article 86 gives rise to any case of action at all, it gives rise to a cause of action for which there is no remedy in damages to compensate for loss already caused by that contravention but only a remedy by way of injunction to prevent future loss being caused.

First, he must establish a goodwill or reputation attached to the goods or services which he supplies in the mind of the purchasing public by association with the identifying "get-up" (whether it consists simply of a brand name or a trade description, or the individual features of labelling or packaging) under which his particular goods or services are offered to the public, such that the get-up is recognised by the public as distinctive specifically of the plaintiff's goods or services.

The grant of injunctive or declaratory relief for an actual or threatened breach of contract would not jeopardise the coherence of our employment laws and would not be a recipe for chaos in the way that, as presaged by Lord Millett in Johnson, the recognition of parallel and inconsistent rights to seek compensation for unfair dismissal in the tribunal and damages in the courts would be.

That is particularly so when, as in this case, the injunction sought is a permanent injunction at trial rather than an interlocutory order granted on American Cyanamid principles having regard to the balance of convenience. A permanent injunction can only be granted if the claimant has proved at the trial that there will be an actual infringement of his rights unless the injunction is granted.