How to get a Court Injunction Quickly

[harryt]

What is the procedure for getting a court injunction to stop something happening quickly?
Can you go straight to a Barrister.
What's the quickest time it can take?
Anyone done it and can recommend a solicitor or Barrister to make it happen?
Won't be posting any details just yet.

[Pincher]

I would imagine that the answer is along the lines of How much money do you have?

Famous/rich people seem to be able to get them at the drop of a hat*


*My perception, not based any real-world experience.

[alscar]

I believe there are “ emergency “ type injunctions that can get put in place within 24 hours BUT at great cost.
It will be the Solicitors and / or Barristers’ costs rather than the actual court costs.
I imagine this is tens of thousands as opposed to single digit.

[RSTurboPaul]

What is the 'something'?

If it is childcare-related, you can make an emergency 'ex parte' application to the court in person and do the paperwork yourself to seek immediate 'custody' (not that they use that term now) but you will go back to court for the other side to respond to the claims etc. and you are not guaranteed to 'win' the initial request.



(IANAL)

[ADJimbo]

It is all dependent on what basis you require the Court Injunction for and what you are seeking to have stopped.

To answer your question - you can instruct a Barrister provided that Barrister conducts work on a direct-access basis.

[BlackTails]

harryt said:

What is the procedure for getting a court injunction to stop something happening quickly?
Can you go straight to a Barrister.
What's the quickest time it can take?
Anyone done it and can recommend a solicitor or Barrister to make it happen?
Won't be posting any details just yet.

The answer to your second question is "very fast".

You won't get any useful recommendations for a solicitor or barrister without identifying what it is about. Lawyers specialise in different fields of work.

The procedure in outline:

- you go to a solicitor and outline your urgent problem. You can go direct to some barristers, but for this sort of thing you're probably better off going to a solicitor first.

- if it is a runner, the solicitor will tell you so and will look for a barrister. In a rapid case, this you're now about an hour past the time you sat down with the solicitor for the first time.

- if the barrister thinks it is a runner and it is urgent, you can in principle be in court and have an injunction the same day. This is what's known as an urgent without notice injunction. Without notice means that you go to court (or in ultra urgent out of court hours cases, telephone a judge) without the other side being there (though sometimes you'll tell the other side as a matter of courtesy what you're doing; in other cases where the other side might act to defeat the effect of an injunction if they were tipped off in advance, you won't).

- again, in a very urgent case, an injunction can be obtained simply by your barrister explaining the story to the judge and setting out the order that you want. Then you have to verify after the event what the barrister has said in evidence called a witness statement.

- you serve (or get someone else to serve) the injunction. In an urgent case you solicitor will telephone the defendant as soon as the judge has finished to say what order has been made against them.

- this sort of very urgent injunction usually has a short life - eg 7 days. On the last day you come back to court to extend it, and the defendant turns up either agreeing to extend the injunction until it can file evidence to dispute it, or disputes it there and then. Eventually though a judge will hear both sides and will decide whether the injunction should carry on until a trial where the underlying dispute will be resolved.

- if you get one of these without notice injunctions, you have to be careful to tell the court everything that is or may be relevant to whether or not to give you the injunction. This is called a duty of full and frank disclosure, which you have to comply with when the other side isn't there. Courts take it very seriously when relevant information is withheld.

- whenever you get an injunction to have to promise to the court that if it turns out later you shouldn't have been granted an injunction, you'll pay any loss the defendant suffers by having been wrongly injuncted.

In an appropriate case you can get an injunction in a day or two or even a few hours. But the key is "appropriate" - judges will always ask why something needs to be done that urgently (which is different to why the claimant wants it to be done that quickly).

Edited by BlackTails on Thursday 22 January 15:43

Edited by BlackTails on Thursday 22 January 15:52