Writs of preliminary injunction are granted only upon prior notice to the party sought to be enjoined and upon their due hearing. (See Rule 58, Section 5 of the Rules of Court).
During the hearing for the application for writ of preliminary injunction, the trial court correctly weighed the evidence presented by both parties before dismissing Naga City's application
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Thus, Rule 58 requires "a full and comprehensive hearing for the determination of the propriety of the issuance of a writ of preliminary injunction," giving the applicant an opportunity to prove that great or irreparable injury will result if no writ is issued and allowing the opposing party to comment on the application.
On the other hand, a temporary restraining order that is heard only with the evidence presented by its applicant is ex parte, but it is issued to preserve the status quo until the hearing for preliminary injunction can be conducted, Miriam College Foundation, Inc v. Court of Appeals explained the difference between preliminary injunction and a restraining order as follows:
Preliminary injunction is an order granted at any stage of an action or proceeding prior to the judgment or final order, requiring a party or a court, agency or a person to perform to refrain from performing a particular act or acts. As an extraordinary remedy, injunction is calculated to preserve or maintain the status quo of things and is generally availed of to prevent actual or threatened acts, until the merits of the case can be heard. A preliminary injunction persists until it is dissolved or until the termination of the action without the court issuing a final injunction.
The basic purpose of restraining order, on the other hand, is to preserve the status quo until the hearing of the application for preliminary injunction. ; Under the former A§5, Rule 58 of the Rules of Court, as amended by A§S, Batas Pambansa Blg. 224, a judge (or justice) may issue a temporary restraining order with a limited life of twenty days from date of issue. If before the expiration of the 20-day period the application for preliminary injunction is denied, the temporary order would thereby be deemed automatically vacated. If no action is taken by the judge on the application for preliminary injunction within the said 20 days, the temporary restraining order would automatically expire on the 20th day by the sheer force of law, no judicial declaration to that effect being necessary. In the instant case, no such preliminary injunction was issued; hence, the TRO earlier issued automatically expired under the aforesaid provision of the Rules of Court.
It is true that some issues are better threshed out before the trial court, such as if the donation to the Department of Health by the Camarines Sur Provincial Government contained an encumbrance for the public to continue using Road Lot No. 3, or the validity of this donation. The Court of Appeals, however, erred when it completely disregarded the evidence presented by petitioners, reasoning out that the question of whether or not Naga City's evidence should prevail over BMC's title over the property was supposedly a factual matter that should be threshed out in the trial court.
By focusing solely on Naga City and respondents' evidence to determine if there was prima facie evidence to issue the writ of preliminary injunction while the case was being heard in the lower court, the Court of Appeals misappreciated the nature of a writ of preliminary injunction.
To reiterate, a preliminary injunction is an ancillary remedy issued after due hearing where [both parties] are given the opportunity to present their respective evidence. [Thus, both] their evidence should be considered.
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