Definition
A special injunction is a court order restraining a party from a specific act — historically, from committing waste, damage, or injury to property — obtained by motion and petition, typically with notice to the opposing party. Unlike a general injunction, which operates broadly, the special injunction is targeted: it addresses a particular threatened wrong and is sought through a defined procedural path.
The historical sources converge on two overlapping characterizations:
1. Procedural sense (Bouvier, Black's): An injunction obtained by motion, usually on notice to the other side, and applied for either on affidavit before the defendant has answered or on the merits disclosed in the defendant's answer. The notice requirement distinguished it from ex parte relief.
2. Substantive sense (Burrill, Black's): An injunction specifically directed at preventing waste, damage, or injury to property — a narrower substantive category than the broad prohibitory injunction.
In modern practice, the term "special injunction" has largely fallen out of active use. Contemporary courts and practitioners instead specify the type of relief sought — temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, permanent injunction — with reference to the applicable procedural rules. Researchers encountering "special injunction" in historical sources should read it in context to determine whether the procedural or substantive sense is intended.
Common Confusion
SPECIAL INJUNCTION vs. GENERAL INJUNCTION: A general injunction restrains a party from doing a class of acts broadly; a special injunction is directed at a particular act or category of harm, most often waste or injury to a specific piece of property. The distinction was meaningful in equity practice but has little operational significance in modern federal or state civil procedure.
SPECIAL INJUNCTION vs. INTERLOCUTORY INJUNCTION: The procedural character of the special injunction — obtained by motion with notice — overlaps considerably with what modern courts call a preliminary or interlocutory injunction. The terms are not synonymous, however. An interlocutory injunction is defined by its timing (granted before final judgment); a special injunction, in its historical usage, was defined by both its procedure (motion with notice) and sometimes its subject matter (property protection). Do not treat the two as equivalent when reading historical equity materials.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical equity materials — particularly English and American chancery records, treatises, and case reports from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — will encounter "special injunction" as a term of art that carries procedural weight. Several navigational points deserve attention:
Procedural vs. substantive readings: The sources disagree, or at least emphasize different things. Bouvier and Black's foreground the notice-and-motion procedure; Burrill foregrounds the property-waste subject matter. A nineteenth-century court using the term may have meant either or both. Check the surrounding procedural context before concluding which sense applies.
The notice distinction matters historically: The fact that a special injunction required notice (as opposed to ex parte applications) was significant in equity practice. It signaled that the court had heard at least some adversarial input before issuing relief. When reading historical chancery records, the presence or absence of notice tells you something about whether the order was truly "special" in the technical sense.
Modern displacement: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65 and its state analogues have replaced the old taxonomy of injunctive relief with a streamlined framework. If your research crosses the twentieth century, assume the term has been displaced and look for the functional modern equivalent — typically a preliminary injunction or TRO — rather than assuming courts are using "special injunction" in the historical sense.
Corpus connections: Law Mind materials on injunctive relief in contract disputes and restrictive covenant enforcement occasionally trace the lineage of equitable relief through historical categories. When those discussions reference the procedural requirements for interlocutory relief, the notice-and-motion requirement associated with the special injunction is part of that lineage.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree that a special injunction is obtained by motion with notice, but they diverge in emphasis. Burrill defines it almost entirely by subject matter — waste, damage, injury to property — with no discussion of the notice procedure. Black's attempts to synthesize both strands, incorporating Burrill's property-harm language alongside Bouvier's procedural characterization. Bouvier is the most procedurally precise, noting that the application could come before answer (on affidavit) or after (on the merits of the answer), a distinction that mattered in timing injunctive relief in equity proceedings.
None of the three sources adequately explains why "special" was the operative modifier — the contrast with a "general" injunction is implied but not fully worked out. Researchers should not infer from the label alone that the relief was narrow in scope; the "special" designation tracked the procedure and subject matter, not necessarily the breadth of the restraint.
The citation to Stephens' Commentaries (4 Steph. Comm. 12, note z) in both Black's and Burrill points to English chancery practice as the doctrinal origin. American equity courts imported the framework, but by the late nineteenth century the terminology was already beginning to blur into the broader category of interlocutory injunctive relief.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia: Injunction Bonds — Rule 65(c), Amount, and Wrongful Injunction Damages [remedies_27]
The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia: Remedies — Injunctive Relief in Contract Disputes [contracts_90]