Restraint, Not Substitution: Rajasthan High Court Restores Trial Court's Refusal of Temporary Injunction in Petition by Adv. Shreyash Ramdev

Well Argued · Rajasthan High Court

Well Argued · Claw Editorial

A trial court refused a temporary injunction against a family business. The appellate court took a different view and granted one in part. In a petition by Adv. Shreyash Ramdev, the Rajasthan High Court held that an appellate court cannot replace the trial court’s discretion with its own unless that discretion was exercised arbitrarily or perversely. It quashed the appellate order and restored the trial court’s.

01The dispute

The case comes from Sri Dungargarh in Bikaner district. Neighbours filed a suit for injunction against a family, alleging that cutter machines run from its premises in a residential area caused noise, air pollution and cracks in adjoining buildings. With the suit, they asked for a temporary injunction to stop the machines until the case was decided.

The family contested this. It said it had lived there and run its business in sanitary articles, tiles and marble for 40 to 50 years, that part of the premises had been regularised for commercial use by the municipal body, and that the business was GST-registered. It also pointed out that proceedings on the same complaint were already pending before another authority under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.

02Two courts, two views

The trial court refused the temporary injunction in June 2025. It noted the long-standing nature of the business, the absence of convincing material on excessive noise, the pending proceedings before the other authority, and the need for evidence on the alleged damage to buildings and health.

The plaintiffs appealed. In December 2025 the appellate court partly allowed the appeal. It let commercial use continue in the 37.15 square metre regularised area, but restrained stone and marble cutting and allied work on the rest of the land while the suit is pending.

03The argument

Before the High Court, the petitioners’ case was about the limits of an appeal. The trial court had exercised its discretion after considering the relevant material. No perversity, arbitrariness, caprice or disregard of settled principles had been pointed out in its order. The appellate court, they argued, had no justification for substituting its own view.

The respondents supported the appellate order as a fair balance. Running cutting machines in a residential area affects the neighbourhood, they said, and the pending proceedings elsewhere did not stop a civil court from granting an injunction.

04What the Court held

The Court applied the Supreme Court’s decision in Wander Ltd. v. Antox India (P) Ltd. The question, it said, was not whether another conclusion was possible on the material, but whether the trial court’s discretion was so flawed that it could be displaced in appeal.

“The appellate power is to correct an erroneous exercise of discretion, not to replace a permissible exercise of discretion with another merely because the latter appears preferable.”

The Court found that the trial court had not refused relief mechanically. It had kept in view the three settled tests: prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable injury. Its conclusion was reasonably open on the material.

The appellate court, by contrast, had not identified any error in how that discretion was exercised. It had reassessed the facts and “fashioned an interim arrangement of its own”. The fact that only part of the premises was regularised for commercial use may matter at the final hearing, the Court said, but it did not by itself make the trial court’s order arbitrary or perverse.

The appellate order was quashed and the trial court’s order restored.

05Why it matters

Appeals against interim orders are among the most common hearings in civil practice. This order is a clear, recent restatement of what the appellant must show: an error in the exercise of discretion, not simply a different view of the same facts.

It is also a good example of choosing the right ground. The petitioners did not ask the High Court to decide who was right about the machines. They asked it to hold the appellate court to the limits of its role, and that is the argument that succeeded.