Court Opinion

ID: 9678984
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:37:47.667395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:09.338575
License: Public Domain

BeeNNAN, J.
(dissenting). The tests for granting an injunction pendente lite are different than the criterion used in granting permanent injunctive relief. We said in the case of Niedzialek v. Barbers Union, 331 Mich 296, at page 300:
“Under the record before us, it appears beyond cavil that when trial on the merits is had the issue will be: Should the picketing by defendants be permitted or should it be enjoined? The final result will depend upon the proof produced at the hearing bearing upon the issue of whether the picketing was pertinent to a lawful labor objective. And the issue may also be presented as to whether or not the picketing was peaceful or otherwise. Neither of these issues can be decided until there is a hearing on the merits. It is also clear, at least reasonably certain, that if in the instant case the picketing is continued in the interim until a hearing on the merits plaintiff will suffer irreparable injury. The contrary cannot be persuasively urged; nor can it reasonably be inferred from the record that enjoining picketing in the interim would result in any permanent or irreparable injury to defendants, even if the ultimate determination should be that the picketing was lawful. It is the settled policy of this Court under such circumstances to grant to a litigant who is threatened with irreparable injury temporary *331injunctive relief and thereby preserve the original status quo.”
The function of an injunction pendente lite is to prevent irreparable harm which would result from natural delay in reaching a trial on the merits. It may be argued that in this case the status quo was summer vacation and that the temporary injunction permitted a change in the status quo by permitting schools to open at the usual time. But the maintenance of actual status quo is not the only function of an injunction pendente lite. The court can consider whether under all the facts and circumstances of the case the issuance of the temporary injunction will maintain the parties in that status which is least likely to do irreparable injury to the party who ultimately prevails.
In this case, the plaintiff school board will be entitled to a permanent injunction unless at the trial on the merits the circuit judge should conclude that by reason of its failure or refusal to do equity to the schoolteachers, it has forfeited its claim to equitable relief. Such a judgment cannot be made by the circuit judge until he has heard testimony on the extent of the bargaining and on the position taken by both sides at the bargaining table. If at the hearing on the merits it should appear that the school board’s treatment of the teachers has been and is equitable and reasonable, a permanent injunction will issue and the teachers will have no basis for complaint concerning the temporary injunction.
If, on the other hand, it should appear at the trial on the merits that the school board has not offered to do equity and has not taken a reasonable position at the bargaining table, then a permanent injunction will be denied and the temporary injunction will be dissolved. Under such circumstances the temporary injunction will merely have delayed the strike until *332the justice of the teachers’ cause and the necessity for their strike will have been vindicated in a court of equity. Such delay is a benefit, not an injury, to the teachers.
The temporary injunction should be affirmed and the ease remanded to the circuit court for a full evi-dentiary hearing on the question of whether a final injunction should issue. It is further directed that the court proceed with dispatch so that a decision on a final injunction can be made before the end of the present school year.