Injunction to Restrain in UK Law

In my judgment, the time has come to lay aside the ritual incantation that this is a jurisdiction which should only be exercised sparingly and with great caution. But in my judgment there is no good reason for diffidence in granting an injunction to restrain foreign proceedings on the clear and simple ground that the defendant has promised not to bring them.

In my judgment, where an injunction is sought to restrain a party from proceeding in a foreign court in breach of an arbitration agreement governed by English law, the English Court need feel no diffidence in granting the injunction, provided that it is sought promptly and before the foreign proceedings are too far advanced.

A right to obtain an interlocutory injunction is not a cause of action. It is dependent upon there being a pre-existing cause of action against the defendant arising out of an invasion, actual or theatened by him, of a legal or equitable right of the plaintiff for the enforcement of which the defendant is amenable to the jurisdiction of the court. The right to obtain an interlocutory injunction is merely ancillary and incidental to the pre-existing cause of action.

However, where the action is brought by the assignee in another jurisdiction which does not recognize the equitable right of the debtor, the debtor's only remedy is (just as it was in the first half of the last century) to apply for an injunction to restrain the assignee from refusing to recognize the equity of the debtor. The insurance company is failing to recognize the equitable rights of the Timecharterers. The equitable remedy for such an infringement is the grant of an injunction.

Reported cases are merely illustrations of circumstances in which particular judges have exercised their discretion, in some cases by granting an injunction, and in others by awarding damages instead. Since they are all cases on the exercise of a discretion, none of them is a binding authority on how the discretion should be exercised. The most that any of them can demonstrate is that in similar circumstances it would not be wrong to exercise the discretion in the same way.

Where it appears that a breach or apprehended breach will continue or occur unless and until effectively restrained by the law and that nothing short of an injunction will provide effective restraint ( City of London Corporation v Bovis Construction Ltd [1992] 3 All ER 697, 714), that will point strongly towards the grant of an injunction. But in all cases the court must decide whether in all the circumstances it is just to grant the relief sought against the particular defendant.

However, the defendant may put in evidence to seek to establish that he has a right to do what would otherwise be a trespass. Then the court must consider the application of the principles set out in American Cyanamid v. Ethicon Ltd. [1975] A.C.396 in relation to the grant or refusal of an interlocutory injunction.