When Waiting Isn't an Option: A Guide to Injunctive Relief in Mauritius

Picture this: a former employee walks out with your client list. A business partner starts quietly moving company funds offshore. A neighbour begins construction that will permanently block your only right of way.

In each case, waiting for a full trial isn’t just inconvenient – it’s fatal to your rights. By the time judgment comes, the client list is gone, the funds are gone, the wall is built.

This is exactly the gap injunctions exist to close.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Most people only discover injunctive relief exists the moment they desperately need it – and by then, they’ve often already lost precious time. The businesses and individuals who protect themselves best are the ones who understand, before the crisis hits, that:

• Urgent court protection is available almost immediately, not “eventually”
• The right application, filed the right way, can freeze a bank account, halt a demolition, or stop a competitor in their tracks
• Getting it wrong procedurally can cost you the remedy entirely – and hand your opponent the advantage

The Toolkit, Decoded

Interim injunctions are your emergency brake. Often granted ex parte – on the applicant’s version of events alone, without notice to the other side – simply to freeze the situation until both parties can be properly heard.

Interlocutory injunctions are the holding position, made once the respondent has had a chance to be heard and the merits considered in more depth. These carry you through until the main case is finally decided, granted where there’s a serious issue to be tried and the balance of convenience favours protection (Malleck Ltd v The Mauritius Commercial Bank, 1992 SCJ 108).

Mandatory injunctions are the heavy artillery. Instead of stopping someone from doing something, they compel a party to actively act – reinstate access, hand back property, remove an obstruction. Because they are so intrusive, courts set the bar high (International Society for Krishna Consciousness v Ascencia, 2013 SCJ 151), and the Privy Council made clear in Gujadhur v Gujadhur [2007] UKPC 54 that a mandatory injunction cannot be granted without a properly founded principal action behind it.

Freezing orders, also known as Mareva injunctions, are the asset-protection weapon. When there’s a real risk that money or property will vanish before a judgment can be enforced, this locks it down (Appavoo L C & Ors v Buttie W & Ors, 2016 SCJ 118).

Prohibitory and perpetual injunctions play the long game – restraining conduct now, or permanently once the case is finally won.

The Legal Test: How Courts Actually Decide

Behind every application sits a settled framework. Mauritian courts have adopted the English approach from American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon [1975] AC 396, most recently restated in Dhorah v Boodhoowa [2026 SCJ 60], which asks three questions in sequence:

1. Is there a serious question to be tried?
2. If the applicant ultimately succeeds at trial, would damages be an adequate remedy?
3. If not, where does the balance of convenience lie?

If damages would genuinely compensate the applicant, and the defendant is good for the money, an injunction will usually be refused – the ordinary trial process is left to run its course.

Crucially, the Judge in Chambers isn’t trying the case at this stage. Conflicts of evidence on affidavit and difficult points of law are left for the substantive hearing; the injunction stage is about managing risk until then, not deciding who’s right.

Freezing Orders: A Special Case, Now With a Common Threshold

Freezing injunctions have always sat slightly apart, protected not by a specific statute but by a well-established line of Supreme Court authority (Air Mauritius Ltd v Tirvengadum, 2002 SCJ 325; Barclays Bank Mauritius Ltd v Karamuth, 2017 SCJ 313).

For years, a stricter “good arguable case” standard was thought to apply to these orders specifically. That distinction has now collapsed.

Following the English Court of Appeal’s decision in Dos Santos v Unitel SA [2024] EWCA Civ 1109 – which equated “good arguable case” with the ordinary “serious issue to be tried” test – Mauritius fell in line in Cheekhooree v Cheekhooree [2025 SCJ 283], with the point confirmed shortly after in Seetamonee v Tota Ram [2025 SCJ 559].

In practice, this means one threshold now governs interim relief generally, rather than a higher bar reserved for asset-freezing.

How It Actually Works

Injunctions in Mauritius move fast because they are heard by a Judge in Chambers, not a full court sitting – a system built for speed, drawing on both English equitable principles and the French-inspired référé procedure under Article 806 of the Code de Procédure Civile.

The English-law side of that equation now rests on a renewed statutory footing. Section 73 of the Courts Act 1945 – the source of the Judge’s power to grant an injunction – was repealed and re-enacted in updated form by the Civil Appeal Act 2025, in force since 5 January 2026.

As it now stands, section 73 confirms that a Judge may grant an injunction in term time or in vacation, and that the Supreme Court may set aside or modify it on an application for review.

On the other side of the coin: if you’re the one served with an injunction, don’t panic – and don’t assume an appeal is your only option.

Actis Consumer Grooming Products Ltd v Super-Max Mauritius [2025 SCJ 388] confirms that a section 73 motion, not a full appeal, is usually the fastest and most appropriate way to challenge or set aside an order made against you – but with the 21-day clock now running from the moment the order is granted, that door doesn’t stay open for long.

The Fine Print That Makes or Breaks an Application

This is where cases are genuinely won and lost, often on details that have nothing to do with the underlying dispute:

• The undertaking in damages. An applicant is expected, in almost every case, to promise to compensate the defendant if the injunction later turns out to have been wrongly granted. Skipping this isn’t a technicality – courts treat its absence as fatal, since without it there’s no way to properly weigh the balance of convenience.
• Precision of the order. Because breach can mean contempt of court, an injunction has to spell out exactly what’s prohibited. A vague prayer – “restrain the defendant from interfering with the association” – invites refusal on that basis alone.
• Preserving the status quo. Pending trial, courts aim to keep matters as they stood before the dispute broke out (Kaudeer v Baichoo, 1972 SCJ 201), rather than letting either side gain ground while the case is pending.
• Interim vs. interlocutory matters for appeal purposes. Whether an order is treated as interim or final affects how and whether it can be challenged, so getting this classification right shapes strategy from the outset.

What an Injunction Is Not

It’s worth being clear-eyed about the limits. An interlocutory injunction doesn’t decide who’s right – it preserves the situation until the real trial happens. It is not a final decree, and a grant or refusal at this stage says nothing about the ultimate strength of either side’s case.

The Real Lesson

The applications that succeed are built on watertight affidavits, full and frank disclosure, a properly framed undertaking, and an attorney who knows exactly which door to knock on – Chambers or référé, section 73 or Article 806, prohibitory or mandatory.