Posts tagged “Injunction Appeals”

Injunction appeals have been in the spotlight of late. We’ve seen a few recent decisions on appeals from temporary restraining orders. And this month has already produced three cases involving effective denials of preliminary injunctions.

One of these cases raised a question about the test for effective—and thus appealable—injunction denials.…

In Amazon.com Services LLC v. NLRB, the Fifth Circuit split over whether a party could appeal from the district court’s delay in deciding a preliminary-injunction motion. The would-be appellant sought to enjoin an order that it file a brief in an NLRB proceeding. When the deadline for that brief arrived, the district court had not yet decided the injunction motion.…

In New York State Telecommunications Association v. James, the Second Circuit split over an attempt at manufacturing finality. The district court had granted a preliminary injunction after concluding that federal law preempted a New York state law. The parties then stipulated to entry of a final judgment. A majority of the Second Circuit determined that this preemption decision effectively resolved the action, meaning the state could appeal.…

In In re Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, a divided Fifth Circuit held that the delay in resolving a preliminary-injunction motion effectively denied that motion. The court thought that the context of the case—impending changes to regulations—required quick action. So when the district court did not decide the preliminary-injunction request by the plaintiffs’ desired date, the Fifth Circuit treated that delay as an appealable denial of a preliminary injunction under 28 U.S.C.…

In Selective Insurance Company of America v. Westfield Insurance Company, the Fourth Circuit dismissed an interlocutory appeal from a duty-to-defend decision. The court assumed—as other courts have held—that duty-to-defend orders can be appealable injunctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). But the underlying litigation in Selective Insurance (that is, the litigation in which the insured was seeking a defense) was resolved while the duty-to-defend appeal was pending.…

28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) gives the courts of appeals jurisdiction to immediately review many district court decisions involving injunctive relief. But § 1292(a)(1)’s text includes an important qualifier. It applies to “[i]nterlocutory orders of the district courts.” Normally this qualifier does little work. After all, most (if not nearly all) § 1292(a)(1) appeals involve injunctions issued by a district court.…

Extensive post-judgment proceedings sometimes follow litigation. These proceedings might involve efforts to collect on a judgment. Or they might involve a district court’s supervision of a consent decree or remedial injunction. These post-judgment proceedings are considered a separate action for finality purposes. So litigants have a right to appeal from a final decision.…

As a general rule, temporary restraining orders (often initialized as TROs) are not immediately appealable. Granted, 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) permits appeals from orders concerning injunctions. But TROs are normally not considered injunctions for appellate-jurisdiction purposes. So litigants generally must wait until the district court rules on a preliminary injunction before taking an appeal.…