INJUNCTION, a writ issued by a court of equity, bidding, or forbidding, a person or per sons to do a certain thing. The injunction orig inated in Roman law, and was anciently known as an interdict, a name it still bears in Scottish practice. It was introduced as a remedy for sonic of the abuses of common law, and as a preventive, when evasion of common law pro visions seemed possible. It is to-day one of the most potent of the legal remedies of an equi table character which stand on the statute books.
There are three main divisions in the pur • poses for which a writ of injunction is issued. A writ may be prohibitive, protective, or restorative. In the first place it may forbid the commission of certain acts of a civil nature which are charged with injustice. Second, it may be so framed as to protect such civil rights of an individual or a corporation as seem to be threatened. Third, it may order the restitu tion or restoration of such rights as have un lawfully been taken away from an individual or a corporation. These characters of the writ have been dearly expounded by Blackstone, as follows *This writ may be had to stay proceedings at law, whatever stage they may have reached; to restrain alienations of property lite, and tenants for life and others having limited inteiest from committing waste. It may be granted to restrain the negotiation of bills of exchange, the sailing of a ship, the transfer of stock, or the alienation of a specific chattel, to prohibit assignees from making a dividend, to prevent parties from removing out of the juris diction, or from marrying, or having any inter course, which the court disapproves of, with a ward. The infringement of a copyright or a patent frequently calls for the exercise of this beneficial process; which may also be had to restrain the fraudulent use of trade marks, or of the names, labels, or other indiciz of the makers or vendors of goods and merchandise, and in a large class of cases, far too numerous to be mentioned here.* The first two kinds of injunction are most commonly used, and a familiar example of the prohibitory writ is that which orders the abate ment of a nuisance. A railroad which lays
tracks without first gaining the right of way may be compelled by injunction to remove them. By such a writ patent rights, copyrights and trade marks are secured from infringement, or proceedings in a court of law are stayed. Some times a court of equity issues an injunction pro hibiting litigants within its own jurisdiction from prosecuting a suit in another jurisdiction; for example, a United States court may restrain creditors for suing in ,State courts for the en forcement of their claims against a bankrupt, and reserve the disposition of his estate to its own. jurisdiction. A court of equity only issues a writ of injunction when a remedy of law ap pears inadequate to give the wronged part the complete relief to which he is entitled. Thus in recent cases the courts have issued writs for bidding labor agitators and others from induc ing or coercing workingmen, in such a way as to bring on a strike to the injury and damage of employers, who might thus be induced to sacrifice their rights in order to escape ruin or irreparable loss.
An injunction in the United States may be preliminary or perpetual. A preliminary writ is sometimes styled interlocutory, as it is issued pendettie lite. The preliminary writ may be made perpetual, if, after arguments made and heard, the court decides that the grounds ad vanced for the continuance are valid, and have been so proved by evidence. Failure to obey an injunction is punishable as a contempt of court (q.v.). Consult Beach, C. F., 'Treatise on the Law of Injunctions' (New York 1895); High, J. L., 'Treatise on the Law of Injunc tions as. Administered in the Courts of the United States and England> (Chicago 1905); Joyce, H. C., 'Treatise on the Law Relating to Injunctions' (3 vols., Albany 1909) ; Kerr, W. W., 'Treatise on the Law and Practice of In junctions' (4th ed., London 1903).