Court Opinion

ID: 8898534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 00:33:26.330961+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:07:39.865012
License: Public Domain

ADAMS, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I agree with parts I and II and with section C of part III of the majority opinion. In reversing the grant of the preliminary injunctions entered in this case, however, I would limit our holding to the failure of the plaintiffs to demonstrate, in the record before the district court, irreparable harm. Such a course would avoid the resolution of issues that need not be decided at this time.
Some cost of compliance with a Federal Trade Commission order is concededly inevitable, but the record here does not show with particularity the burden such compliance would impose upon the individual plaintiffs. To find irreparable harm in this regard the district court appears to have relied only on statistical figures from governmental reports.1 A record this scanty is inadequate, in my judgment, to show irreparable injury by any standard. Thus, there does not appear to be any need for the Court to fashion a general rule — applicable to other factual situations — for determining whether the cost of compliance would inflict irreparable injury.2
Nor is there a basis in the record for concluding that differences in the extent of discovery, depending upon the type of proceeding available to the litigants, can never constitute irreparable harm.3 The record in this case does not establish that mandamus proceedings would necessarily occasion a scope of discovery so much narrower than the scope of discovery available in this suit for injunctive relief that plaintiffs would be irreparably harmed thereby.

. See majority opinion at 527 supra.

. Compare majority opinion at 527 supra. I am not prepared to hold, at least on the basis of this record, that, short of provoking a corporate liquidity crisis or significant changes in company operations, cost of compliance can never be the basis of a finding of irreparable harm for the purpose of granting injunctive relief.

. The plaintiffs contend that without a preliminary injunction they will be subjected to enforcement proceedings in the Southern District of New York. In that event, plaintiffs contend, discovery might be limited because enforcement by mandamus is a summary proceeding in which a court may curtail recourse to discovery that is otherwise available in plenary civil actions such as the present suit for injunctive relief.