PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION:

A preliminary injunction is an order granted at any stage of an action prior to judgment of final order, requiring a party, court, agency, or person to refrain from a particular act or acts. It is a preservative remedy to ensure the protection of a party’s substantive rights or interests pending the final judgment in the principal action. A plea for an injunctive writ lies upon the existence of a claimed emergency or extraordinary situation which should be avoided for otherwise, the outcome of a litigation would be useless as far as the party applying for the writ is concerned.  At times referred to as the “Strong Arm of Equity,” the Suprteme Court has consistently ruled that there is no power the exercise of which is more delicate and which calls for greater circumspection than the issuance of an injunction. It should only be extended in cases of great injury where courts of law cannot afford an adequate or commensurate remedy in damages;  “in cases of extreme urgency; where the right is very clear; where considerations of relative inconvenience bear strongly in complainant’s favor; where there is a willful and unlawful invasion of plaintiff’s right against his protest and remonstrance, the injury being a continuing one, and where the effect of the mandatory injunction is rather to reestablish and maintain a preexisting continuing relation between the parties, recently and arbitrarily interrupted by the defendant, than to establish a new relation.” For the writ to issue, two requisites must be present, namely, the existence of the right to be protected, and that the facts against which the injunction is to be directed are violative of said right. It is necessary that one must show an unquestionable right over the premises. Thus, the following requisites must be proved before a writ of preliminary injunction, be it mandatory or prohibitory, will issue:

(1)      The applicant must have a clear and unmistakable right to be protected, that is a right in esse;

(2)      There is a material and substantial invasion of such right;

(3)     There is an urgent need for the writ to prevent irreparable injury to the applicant; and

(4)       No other ordinary, speedy, and adequate remedy exists to prevent the infliction of irreparable injury.

                        x x x  It bears stressing that an injunction is not a remedy to protect or enforce contingent, abstract, or future rights; it will not issue to protect a right not in esse and which may never arise, or to restrain an act which does not give rise to a cause of action. There must exist an actual right. Verily, petitioner cannot lay claim to an actual, clear and positive right based on an expired service contract.Moreover, well-entrenched in this jurisdiction that no court can compel a party to agree to a contract through the instrumentality of a writ of preliminary injunction (Thunder Security and Investigation Agency/Lourdes M. Lasala  vs. National Food Authority (NFA) & NFA Regional Bids and Awards Committee (Region 1), G.R. No. 182042, July 27, 2011, VILLARAMA, JR., J.).