Indiana injunctions: if your judge cannot be found, go to the next circuit

An emergency application is worth nothing if there is nobody to hear it. Indiana's Rule 65 is unusual in addressing that directly: it puts a duty on the judge, and gives the applicant a route out if the duty cannot be met.

The judge has to be available

Trial Rule 65(E)(3):

The judge shall make himself readily available to consider temporary restraining orders, conduct hearings, fix the manner of giving notice and the time and place for hearings under this rule, and shall act and require the parties to act promptly.

Note the two halves. The judge must be readily available for four specific functions, and must "act and require the parties to act promptly" — the obligation runs to both the bench and the bar.

Assignment does not bend around an injunction application: "Assignment of cases shall not be affected by the fact that a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction is sought." You do not get a different judge because the matter is urgent.

And if the judge cannot be found

The escape route is precise, and it is built on an affidavit:

If the party seeking relief or his attorney by affidavit establishes that the judge assigned to the case is not available or cannot be found to consider an application for a restraining order, to conduct a hearing, or to fix the manner of giving notice and the time and place for a hearing under this rule, he may apply to any other judge in the circuit

And if that fails too:

If the affidavit establishes that no other judge in the circuit is available or to be found, he may apply to the judge of any adjoining circuit.

The affidavit is the mechanism at every step, so the search has to be documented as it happens. A lawyer telephoning chambers at nine on a Friday evening should be recording who was called and what the response was, because that record becomes the affidavit.

Ten days to enter the order

Trial Rule 65(E)(3) closes with a deadline aimed at the court rather than the parties:

Unless an order is entered within ten [10] days after the hearing upon the granting, modifying or dissolving of a temporary or preliminary injunction, the relief sought shall be subject to the provisions of Rule 53.1 .

Rule 53.1 is Indiana's lazy-judge rule — the mechanism for withdrawing a matter from a judge who has not ruled. So an injunction hearing that produces no order within ten days is not simply delayed; it becomes subject to that machinery.

For a party waiting on a decision, that is a concrete remedy rather than a complaint.

No preliminary injunction without a hearing

Trial Rule 65(A)(1): "No preliminary injunction shall be issued without an opportunity for a hearing upon notice to the adverse party." An opportunity for a hearing, on notice — the temporary restraining order is the only instrument available without one.

Modification, and responsive pleadings

Trial Rule 65(E)(4) keeps the orders open to revision: "Upon the court's own motion or the motion of any party, orders granting or denying temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions" may be modified, and the rule addresses how responsive pleadings run alongside them.

An injunction in Indiana is therefore a live order rather than a settled one, and the court may revisit it without waiting for an application.

Security

Trial Rule 65(C) makes the undertaking a precondition:

No restraining order or preliminary injunction shall issue except upon the giving of security by the applicant, in such sum as the court deems proper, for the payment of such costs and damages as may be incurred or suffered by any party who is found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.

"Except upon the giving of security" — the order does not issue without it, though the amount is the court's to fix. The rule exempts the State and its officers and agencies.

When the other side cannot be found

Indiana's ten-day limit on a TRO granted without notice has an extra escape the federal rule does not carry:

shall expire by its terms within such time after entry, not to exceed ten [10] days, as the court fixes, unless within the time so fixed the order, for good cause shown, is extended for a like period or unless the whereabouts of the party against whom the order is granted is unknown and cannot be determined by reasonable diligence or unless the party against whom the order is directed consents that it may be extended for a longer period.

Three ways past ten days, then: good cause, consent, or the restrained party cannot be found.

The third is the distinctive one, and it is the practical answer to a problem the other two do not solve. A party who is evading service or has simply disappeared cannot consent to an extension and is not going to appear to contest one. Rather than let the order lapse, Indiana lets it continue — but only on a showing that the whereabouts are unknown and cannot be determined "by reasonable diligence."

So the applicant's file should record what was actually done to find the person. Reasonable diligence is the condition, and it is the applicant who will have to describe it.

"The reasons for the extension shall be entered of record" applies here as elsewhere.

Domestic relations orders are addressed to one person

Rule 65(E) governs orders in dissolution, separation and child support cases, and it draws a line that matters in practice:

In the event a party seeks to enjoin by an order the non-moving party from abusing, harassing, or disturbing the peace of the petitioning party or any child or step-child of the parties, or exclude the non-moving party from the family dwelling, the dwelling of the non-moving party, or any other place, and the court determines that an order shall be issued, such order shall be addressed to one person. A joint or mutual order shall not be issued.

No mutual orders. Where the relief sought is personal — abuse, harassment, exclusion from a dwelling — the order runs against one person. If both parties want that relief, "they shall do so by separate petitions," each reviewed and granted or denied "on its individual merits," and if both succeed the court issues separate orders.

Property and insurance restraints are different: those the court may enter as a joint order binding both parties.

The effect provision is short and worth knowing: "An order entered under this paragraph is automatically effective upon service." No further step is needed, and enforcement runs through "all remedies provided by law including contempt."

A short checklist

Applying:

1. Go to the assigned judge first. Urgency does not change the assignment.
2. Document the search as you make it — the escape route runs on affidavits.
3. Apply to another judge in the circuit only on an affidavit establishing unavailability.
4. Go to an adjoining circuit only on an affidavit that no judge in the circuit can be found.
5. Expect a hearing for any preliminary injunction; only a TRO can issue without one.
6. Be ready with security. No order issues without it unless you act for the State.

Waiting or responding:

1. Diary ten days from the hearing. No order by then brings Rule 53.1 into play.
2. Ask the court to modify rather than only to dissolve; the rule contemplates revision.
3. Check the affidavits if the order came from a judge other than the assigned one.
4. Argue the security amount while it is being fixed; it is your protection.

Where these rules live

• Ind. T.R. 65 — Injunctions
• Ind. T.R. 53.1 — Failure to rule on motion
• Ind. T.R. 6 — Time
• Responding to an Indiana complaint
• Indiana motion to dismiss
• Indiana motion to compel discovery

This page explains what the rules say. It isn't legal advice, and the substantive showing required for injunctive relief is developed in case law this site doesn't cover.