On occasions you might need to take emergency action to protect your business. Examples might be where another company or individual is either damaging your business by saying things about your business that are untrue, or is using your good name and reputation for their own advantage. Perhaps you have supplied goods or services to a company or individual which is going into liquidation, or maybe you are owed money by someone and you learn that they are in the throes of dissipating their assets so that you can't get your hands on their possessions.
On these occasions you may not be able to wait for the dispute to be resolved at a future trial in the usual way, as by that time untold damage might have been done to your business.
Where there are urgent factors that mean you cannot wait, there are steps that you can take on an emergency basis outside of the usual court timetables.
In particular you can ask the Court to grant an interim order - called an injunction - that literally "freezes” everything. The damaging conduct stops, and any status quo is preserved.
The parties then have to go to court and to a trial in due course to argue the dispute out in the usual way, but at least the damaging conduct is stopped pending that first hearing.
This is of course good in that you no longer suffer ongoing damage, and you can then seek, in the main court action, compensation for financial losses you have incurred and also an order that the interim injunction be made final and forever.
Whilst injunctions can thus help you, not all that glitters is gold. They are very expensive. You won't always get the injunction you are looking for. You still have to go through the expense and time of a main court action. Finally - when you are being granted an injunction - you have to give an undertaking that if at the main trial it turns out that you were not entitled to the interim injunction that you got, you will compensate the other side for any losses they have incurred as a result of that injunction. You also have to show the court before it grants you the injunction that you are good for that money.
We have a large Commercial Litigation Team that has the expertise and the resources to "drop everything” if you find yourself in need of urgent legal action to protect your business.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any issue of this kind. As we say, we are always there for businesses who are in our BLUE LAW scheme, so we invite you to join BLUE LAW now. Once you have joined, we try to answer any legal enquiries that you have, free of charge. If legal work is needed, we give you a price, and you are then free to "shop around". If you wish to speak to us now, please click on "Please Contact Me Now” or call us on 0800 084 3256 We look forward to always being there for you.
