Court Opinion

ID: 9444405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 20:59:56.550544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:51.559090
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
1. Plaintiff’s complaint prayed both a preliminary and a final injunction. Its motion sought the relief which it asked in its complaint. When a plaintiff, without seeking summary judgment, makes a motion for preliminary injunction, if the judge refuses to grant it, because he considers insufficient affidavits offered by plaintiff, an appeal of course lies under 28 U.S.C. § 1292. I think there should be no different conclusion merely because plaintiff seeks the preliminary injunction by means of a paper which plaintiff calls a motion for summary judgment.
A contrary conclusion, by sheer ritualism, would waste time. For plaintiff, the next minute after the denial of the summary judgment motion, could present the same papers unchanged except for a new label, “Motion for a preliminary injunction.” For that reason, I disagree with Morgenstern Chemical Co. v. Schering Corp., 3 Cir., 181 F.2d 160, where the court said at page 162; “Nothing has occurred in or as a result of the denial of the motion [for summary judgment] which precludes plaintiff from seeking a temporary injunction in accordance with established procedure if he believes immediate injunctive relief is necessary and proper.”
2. Ordinarily an order denying a summary judgment is not appealable. It is suggested that the consequence of our ruling here will mean that, if only a plaintiff includes in his complaint a prayer for a preliminary injunction, any order denying a summary judgment will become appealable, and that thus the-courts of appeal will be faced with many frivolous appeals. But many an appeal from a denial of a motion, explicitly labeled a motion for preliminary injunction, is frivolous — because of the trial judge’s wide discretion in such matter— and receives short shrift when the appeal is heard on the merits.
3. The case for appealability here, even as to the denial of a final injunction, is peculiarly strong and exceptional. For the judge did not refuse to grant such an injunction on the ground that there was a triable issue of fact, but on the basis of his legal conclusion that, even taking the evidence as if presented at a trial, plaintiff had not shown that it was entitled to such relief.