Opinion ID: 1435053
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Traditional Equity Theory.

Text: The trial court found that the occupation of the chancellor's office threatened to interfere with the successful administrative functioning of the East-West Center. The injuries flowing from such interference, resulting as they do in the threatened loss of class time by both students and faculty, are not susceptible to pecuniary valuation. Thus, the plaintiffs were faced with the threat of irreparable injury and, under traditional equitable principles, the trial court properly sought to enjoin those acts which threatened to cause such injury. See 4 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence, § 1347 (5th ed. 1941). In addition, we do not agree with the defendants' contentions that the suitability of injunctive relief in this case is affected by the possible criminal nature of the defendants' conduct. The courts and commentators have long recognized that although equity will not enjoin an act merely because it is criminal, an injunction will issue where an individual property right is also threatened or there are other appropriate circumstances. [1] In such circumstances equity acts not to enforce the criminal law but to protect the rights of the individual from irreparable injury. As the New York Court of Appeals explained in People ex rel. Bennett v. Laman, 277 N.Y. 368, 376, 14 N.E.2d 439, 442 (1938): [T]he criminal nature of an act will not deprive equity of the jurisdiction that would otherwise attach.   . Whether or not the act sought to be enjoined is a crime, is immaterial. Equity does not seek to enjoin it simply because it is a crime; it seeks to protect some proper interest. If the interest sought to be protected is one of which equity will take cognizance, it will not refuse to take jurisdiction on the ground that the act which invades that interest is punishable by the penal statutes of the State. Thus, under the traditional principles of equity injunctive relief was properly granted. We do not choose, however, to rest our decision on this ground alone. In challenging the use of an injunction in this case, the defendants have raised questions of policy which merit discussion.