Supreme Court of Texas ══════════ No. 22-0398 ══════════ Edward Van Huis, IV, Petitioner, v. Marine Ventures, LTD, Respondent ═══════════════════════════════════════ On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth District of Texas ═══════════════════════════════════════ JUSTICE YOUNG, joined by Justice Lehrmann and Justice Busby, dissenting from the denial of the petition for review. Texas courts issue thousands of injunctions each year, as statistical reports confirm.1 Many among that number afford at least nominally temporary relief. Temporary restraining orders and temporary injunctions may be quotidian occurrences in our judicial system, but for all their frequency, they always amount to an exercise of 1 E.g., Texas Office of Court Administration, Annual Statistical Report for the Texas Judiciary (Fiscal Year 2021), available at https://www.txcourts. gov/media/1454127/fy-21-annual-statistical-report-final.pdf. extraordinary equitable power. That authority is often indispensable for preserving a party’s rights. But what if an injunction turns out to be wrongful and causes harm that cannot be remedied on appeal? Our rules supply one answer. To help prevent our courts from becoming tools not of equity but of inequity, an injunction-seeking applicant must post a bond in an amount set by the trial court: “In the order granting any temporary restraining order or temporary injunction, the court shall fix the amount of security to be given by the applicant.” Tex. R. Civ. P. 684. The bond requirement recognizes that restraining activities or funds in error is not costless for the affected party. At the same time, bonds may not be so high as to effectively foreclose access to injunctive relief. Getting the bond right can be essential to both sides. After all, temporary injunctive relief is granted frequently; doing so can impose extraordinary costs and consequences; and such massive authority must not be abused, even unwittingly. Bonds play a key role. They help ensure the integrity of judicial actions and they deter cynical invocations of equitable remedies. This Court, one would thus reasonably expect, surely has issued many opinions to guide Texas trial courts in exercising their discretion regarding injunction bonds. Yet one would be wrong to so presume. Our lower courts have long acknowledged the paucity of guidance from this Court. As the Third Court of Appeals noted (if not lamented), “[n]either Rule 684 nor the case law gives us much guidance in evaluating the sufficiency of the [injunction] bond . . . .” Franklin Sav. Ass’n v. Reese, 756 S.W.2d 14, 16 (Tex. App.—Austin 1988, no writ). The Fifth Court of Appeals has also marveled at the same point: “Surprisingly, there is 2 little authority to guide” the assessment of the adequacy of an injunction bond. Currie v. Int’l Telecharge, Inc., 722 S.W.2d 471, 475 (Tex. App.— Dallas 1986, no writ). All these decades later, their implicit request for help has gone unanswered. Perhaps perceiving this inexplicable gap in the law, two learned jurists—one a former member of this Court and both now federal judges— wrote an aptly titled article on the consequences of obtaining a wrongful injunction. See Jeffrey V. Brown & Andrew …
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