Some commercial disputes cannot wait for a final court judgment.
A competitor may be about to use confidential information. A former employee may threaten to disclose commercially sensitive material. Valuable assets may be at risk. Intellectual property may allegedly be infringed. Or a dispute between shareholders or directors may threaten the control or operation of a company.
In circumstances like these, obtaining damages months or years later may not adequately address the immediate problem.
A business may therefore need to consider seeking an injunction.
An injunction is a court order that can require a person or business to stop doing something or, in appropriate cases, require particular action to be taken.
However, an injunction is not automatically available simply because a business believes another party has acted unlawfully.
It is a discretionary remedy, and the precise legal test depends on the type of injunction sought and the circumstances of the case. The strength of the underlying claim, urgency, evidence, adequacy of damages, potential injustice to both sides and the terms of the proposed order can all be important.
Under Order 50 of the Rules of the Superior Courts, the High Court may grant an injunction by interlocutory order where it appears just or convenient to do so and may impose conditions it considers appropriate.
In commercial disputes, injunctions are commonly used to preserve the position while the underlying dispute is being determined.
For example, a business might seek an order preventing another party from:
Some injunctions prohibit conduct. Others, known as mandatory injunctions, can require a party to take positive action.
The precise form of the relief matters enormously. Asking a court to preserve an existing position may involve different considerations from asking it to compel another party to take a positive step.
The terminology can be confusing.
An interim injunction generally refers to short-term relief sought at an early and often urgent stage. Its purpose is typically to protect the position until a fuller application can be heard.
An interlocutory injunction generally remains in place pending the trial of the underlying proceedings or until a further court order.
The practical distinction is important.
Imagine a company discovers on Monday that commercially sensitive information is due to be disclosed on Wednesday.
Waiting several weeks for a fully contested application could defeat the entire purpose of seeking relief.
An urgent interim application may therefore be considered to preserve the position until both sides can present their arguments more fully.
But urgency does not remove the need to establish a proper legal and evidential basis for the application.
There isn’t a simple checklist that guarantees an injunction.
The Irish Supreme Court’s decision in Merck Sharp & Dohme Corporation v Clonmel Healthcare Limited [2019] IESC 65 is an important modern authority on the approach to interlocutory injunctions. The Court emphasised a flexible assessment aimed at minimising the risk of injustice pending trial rather than mechanically applying a formula.
For a business considering urgent relief, several questions are particularly important.
An injunction application is not normally the final trial of the dispute.
The court is being asked to decide whether temporary protection should be granted before the underlying rights and wrongs have been finally determined.
There must therefore be a proper legal basis for the proceedings.
A business cannot simply say:
“What they are doing is unfair, so we want the court to stop them.”
The application needs to be connected to an identifiable legal right or cause of action and supported by evidence.
The underlying claim might concern breach of contract, confidential information, intellectual property, company law or another recognised legal basis.
Exactly what must be established will depend on the particular type of injunction and claim.
This is one of the most important practical questions.
Suppose a supplier breaches a contract and the resulting financial loss can ultimately be calculated with reasonable accuracy.
A court may need to consider whether an award of damages at trial could adequately compensate the claimant.
Now consider a different situation.
A company’s confidential commercial strategy is about to be disclosed publicly.
Once the information has been released, it may be impossible to make it confidential again.
Or an alleged intellectual-property infringement may cause consequences that are difficult to quantify precisely.
In situations where money at the end of a case may not adequately repair the harm, the argument for preventative relief can become more significant.
But adequacy of damages is not considered only from the applicant’s perspective. The court must also consider the potential consequences for the party against whom an injunction is sought.
You may sometimes see this described as the balance of convenience, although the modern Irish approach is broader and concerned with the balance of justice and minimising the risk of injustice.
The court may need to compare two risks:
What happens if the injunction is refused and the applicant eventually wins?
against:
What happens if the injunction is granted and the respondent eventually wins?
That can involve highly practical commercial considerations.
Would refusing the injunction allow irreversible harm to occur?
Would granting it effectively shut down the respondent’s business?
Could the position be restored later?
Can losses on either side be calculated and compensated?
Would one outcome effectively decide the entire case before trial?
These questions demonstrate why injunction applications are intensely fact-specific.
The Supreme Court’s Merck Sharp & Dohme decision emphasises that the assessment is directed towards minimising injustice in circumstances where the court does not yet know which party will ultimately succeed.
If your business believes urgent court intervention is necessary, delay can cause serious problems.
There is an obvious practical reason.
If the threatened event has already happened, the particular preventative injunction originally contemplated may no longer provide useful relief.
But delay can also affect how the court views the application.
A 2025 Supreme Court determination, for example, records a High Court decision in which a delay of more than seven months in seeking an injunction was treated as relevant to the assessment.
That does not mean every short delay defeats an application, or that every urgent application succeeds.
It means that if a business says:
“This cannot wait.”
its conduct should generally be consistent with that position.
Urgency should not be confused with speculation.
A business seeking an injunction needs evidence supporting what it says has happened, what is threatened and why intervention is required.
Depending on the dispute, useful evidence might include contracts, emails, correspondence, board documents, screenshots, transaction records, intellectual-property documentation, financial information or witness evidence.
Affidavit evidence commonly plays an important role in interlocutory applications.
This is why businesses facing an urgent dispute should preserve relevant material immediately rather than beginning to collect evidence only after proceedings have started.
The exact evidence required will depend entirely on the claim.
This is an important concept for businesses to understand before seeking an injunction.
A court granting temporary relief is making a decision before the underlying dispute has been finally determined.
There is therefore a possibility that an injunction could later turn out to have restrained a party that was legally entitled to do what it proposed to do.
For that reason, an applicant seeking an injunction may be required to give an undertaking as to damages.
Broadly, this is an undertaking designed to address loss suffered by the restrained party if it is later established that the injunction should not have been granted and the court determines compensation is appropriate.
For a company, this should not be treated as a formality.
The potential financial consequences need to be considered carefully.
The importance of an undertaking can depend on the circumstances. Recent Irish case material also illustrates that the absence of an undertaking may be relevant to the court’s assessment, although an undertaking is not invariably required in every situation.
The circumstances are extremely varied, but several recurring commercial situations illustrate why urgent relief may be considered.
Imagine that a business discovers confidential technical information or commercially sensitive data is about to be disclosed or used by another party.
If the information becomes public, damages later may not put the business back into the position it occupied beforehand.
Similar urgency can arise in disputes involving trademarks, copyright, patents or other intellectual-property rights.
An injunction may therefore be considered where the objective is to prevent alleged misuse or infringement while the underlying rights are determined.
The appropriate legal test and evidence will depend on the intellectual-property right and circumstances involved.
A business may sometimes have evidence giving rise to concern that assets relevant to a dispute are about to be dissipated or moved beyond reach.
In exceptional circumstances, specialist forms of injunctive relief may be available.
A Mareva, or freezing, injunction can potentially restrain dealings with assets.
However, freezing injunctions are powerful remedies with specific requirements. A business should not assume that an unpaid debt, even a substantial one, is by itself enough to obtain an order freezing another party’s assets.
Specialist legal advice should be obtained immediately where asset dissipation is genuinely suspected.
Company disputes can become urgent very quickly.
A disagreement between directors or shareholders might involve a proposed transaction, removal from office, access to company assets, transfer of shares or another step that could materially alter the company’s position.
In some circumstances, an injunction may be considered to preserve the existing position until the substantive dispute can be determined.
But company disputes are particularly fact-sensitive. The company’s constitution, shareholders’ agreements, board resolutions, Companies Act requirements and the legal rights of the parties may all need to be examined.
A business may seek to prevent a former employee or other contracting party from engaging in conduct allegedly prohibited by a contractual restriction.
But the existence of a clause does not automatically mean an injunction will be granted.
The enforceability and scope of the restriction, the contractual wording, the conduct complained of and the evidence of threatened harm all require careful analysis.
Injunctions can also arise in broader commercial contract disputes.
A business might seek to prevent another party from taking a particular action pending determination of contractual rights.
However, where the real complaint can be adequately addressed by an award of money, injunctive relief may be more difficult to justify.
Again, the question is not simply whether a contract has been breached.
It is whether urgent court intervention is an appropriate remedy for that particular breach.
In particularly urgent circumstances, applications may sometimes be made ex parte—without the other party initially being present.
This is exceptional territory.
Because the affected party does not have the opportunity to answer the allegations at that initial stage, the applicant carries significant responsibilities when presenting the case to the court, including obligations concerning disclosure of relevant material.
Any order obtained may also be short-lived, with the matter returning to court so that the affected party can be heard.
A business should therefore obtain urgent legal advice rather than assuming an ex parte application is simply a quicker version of an ordinary injunction.
Potentially.
An injunction is not the only way a court can deal with an urgent commercial dispute.
Order 50 expressly provides that where a pre-trial injunction application concerns a controversy that could more conveniently be addressed by an early trial, the court may order an early trial and make appropriate orders in the meantime.
That is another reason businesses should think about the objective rather than becoming fixed on one particular remedy.
Sometimes the best solution may be temporary protection.
Sometimes it may be getting the underlying dispute determined quickly.
If you believe your business may require urgent injunctive relief, the first hours and days can matter.
Preserve the evidence. Keep relevant contracts, emails, messages, board papers, screenshots, financial information and other documents. Do not alter or destroy material that could become relevant.
Establish exactly what is threatened. Identify what the other party proposes to do and, critically, when.
Create a chronology. Record the key events, dates, communications and people involved.
Identify the harm. Be specific about what will happen if the conduct continues. Avoid vague assertions such as “this will damage the business.”
Quantify what you can. If some potential losses can be calculated, gather the financial evidence.
Review the contract. Check governing law, jurisdiction, dispute-resolution clauses, notice provisions, confidentiality obligations and relevant restrictions.
Avoid unnecessary confrontation or publication. Emails written in anger can become evidence.
Seek legal advice promptly. If the threat is genuinely imminent, make that clear when contacting your solicitor.
Most importantly, do not manufacture urgency. Courts examine evidence and circumstances. The fact that something is commercially inconvenient does not necessarily mean it justifies emergency court intervention.
This is often the most useful strategic question.
If the damage has already occurred and can be compensated financially, a damages claim may ultimately be more appropriate.
If something harmful is about to happen and cannot realistically be undone, urgent preventative relief may deserve immediate consideration.
If the dispute concerns a continuing commercial relationship, negotiation or mediation might still be relevant alongside the legal strategy.
And if a final determination is needed quickly, an expedited trial may sometimes be more appropriate than prolonged interlocutory proceedings.
The remedy should follow the commercial objective—not the other way around.
When a commercial dispute requires urgent action, the legal position and available evidence need to be assessed quickly.
Sherwin O’Riordan advises businesses on commercial disputes and urgent court applications, including injunctions and other forms of interim and interlocutory relief.
We can help businesses assess the underlying legal claim, evidence, urgency, potential exposure and available remedies before deciding on the appropriate course of action.
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