An interim application is an application created amongst the start off of the proceedings and the trial itself. The consequence is that litigants have to face trial actions that are immeasurably more pricey, and far far more time consuming than they need to be. This also locations massive benefits in the hands of wealthy and strong organisations and men and women, who, with delays and unscrupulous techniques, can put the cost of a civil trial entirely out of the reach of ordinary individuals.
Generally, for that reason, an ex parte application in which relief is sought against a person who is not just before the court would be made in a scenario of urgency and any order granted would be topic to confirmation right after the particular person against whom the relief is sought has had an opportunity to present his or her side of the story to the court.
Given that the proceedings will typically have to be brought where the respondent lives, performs or conducts a small business, it follows that where the applicant resides or carries on small business in a diverse city or town to the respondent, the applicant will not be able to appoint an address in his or her own city or town at which the respondent must deliver the required documents.
Circumstances in which relief is sought against one more party but in which the goal of bringing the application would be defeated by providing notice to that party, for example, proceedings in which intense urgency is required or proceedings directed at getting an order compelling a trade rival of the applicant to return confidential trade records stolen by a former employee of the applicant and handed more than by that employee to the trade rival.
The Supreme Court Rules supply that in cases of urgency ‘the court or a judge may possibly dispense with the forms and service provided for in these guidelines and may possibly dispose of such matter at such time and spot and in such manner and in accordance with such process (which shall so far as practicable be in terms of these guidelines) as to it appears meet suitable’.
