Practice & procedure

It was settled law that an asset freezing injunction involved imposing a restraint on a defendant dealing with his own assets, whereas a proprietary injunction involved imposing a restraint on the defendant dealing with the claimant’s assets or with assets in which the claimant had an existing proprietary interest. The requirements for a proprietary injunction were not identical to those for a freezing injunction. The principles to be applied were the normal American Cyanamid principles. The reality of any threat to interfere with the property in which the claimant said that it had a proprietary interest had to be relevant to the court’s decision whether to intervene by granting an injunction. It was settled law that a loss claimed by a shareholder which was merely reflective of a loss suffered by the company was not recoverable by the shareholder, save in a case where, by reason of the wrong done to it, the company was unable to pursue its claim against the wrongdoer (the no reflective loss principle).