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Legal Eagle

Defamation

Q: Injunctions on scripts

I have written a play based upon a factual situation. One of the protagonists has threatened to take out an injunction claiming the script is offensive and libellous. Can you explain how an injunction works and when it can be used?

A: An injunction is an Order of the Court prohibiting or restraining the commission of an illegal or potentially illegal act constituting an infringement of a public or private right. Alternatively it may be 'mandatory' in form, i.e. ordering a party to do a specified act, such as to deliver up offending goods or printed material. An injunction can also be 'interlocutory' i.e. temporary, as an urgent interim measure to maintain the existing situations of the parties to a dispute until it can be investigated in more detail at a specified date or at the trial of the case, or it may be 'permanent', so as to continue indefinitely unless and until discharged by the Court. It is frequently invoked in cases of libel and breach of copyright, in order to restrain a threatened publication, where irreparable injury to reputation or goodwill is likely to occur, and it will only be granted where the Court is satisfied that pecuniary damages alone are unlikely to be an adequate remedy.

In cases of extreme urgency, an interlocutory injunction measure may be granted as a temporary measure for just a few days, even without the defendant being heard, and it is even possible in such cases to arrange to see a judge at his private home late at night or at a weekend for this purpose, but only where it can be that damage may be caused to the applicant if there is the slightest delay or if the defendant is given any advance notice of the application. As a condition of being granted an interlocutory injunction the applicant is usually required to give an undertaking as to damages and costs payable by him to the defendant if, after subsequent litigation and legal argument, it is established ought never to have been granted.

Usually an injunction is required to be served personally on the offending party, but in very pressing cases notice of the injunction by fax or telephone will be effective until there is time to serve a copy of the injunction on the defendant personally.

Disobedience of an injunction is an extremely grave matter. Apart from having adverse financial consequences, it is a contempt of court punishable by imprisonment or by sequestration of property. In your case I have no means of knowing whether the threat to take out an injunction based on a claim that your script is libellous is justified or not, but I can say that there is no cause of action for writing something which is merely offensive and not defamatory.

First published July 1994