§ 8.01-626.Review of injunction and certain orders; petitions for review.

This section gives Virginia a fast track for reviewing injunction rulings without waiting for the whole case to end. Four kinds of circuit court action trigger it: granting a preliminary injunction, refusing to grant one, dissolving or refusing to enlarge an injunction already granted, or entering certain other orders made reviewable under § 8.01-670.2 or § 8.01-670.3.

The window to act is short — 15 days from the circuit court’s order to file a petition for review with the clerk of the Supreme Court. The clerk assigns the petition to a panel of three justices, the aggrieved party has to serve opposing counsel, and that counsel gets 15 days to respond unless the court sets a different schedule. The petition itself has to carry the record from below — the original papers and the circuit court’s order on the injunction — so the panel can act on what happened at the trial level.

The section leaves room for a broader response than a three-justice panel: nothing in it prevents the full Supreme Court, through an order joined by more justices, from resolving the petition instead. That flexibility signals the panel process is a quick screening mechanism, not necessarily the final word on the dispute.