Interim Relief and Attachments in Civil and Commercial Cases

What securing assets is for

A favourable judgment against someone who no longer owns anything is a document with no practical effect. The purpose of interim relief is to prevent that: to tie up assets so that, when the decision arrives, there is something to enforce it against.

There is a second effect, less legal and very real: securing assets changes the negotiation. A counterparty with assets frozen has a concrete incentive to settle; one that has felt no consequence tends to stretch the case as far as the system allows.

What measures can be sought

• Attachment and seizure of real property, registered against the title record.
• Attachment of bank accounts and of funds third parties hold for the debtor.
• Attachment of vehicles and of machinery subject to registration.
• Attachment of shares or quotas held by the debtor in companies, and of the dividends due to it.
• Attachment of the going concern and of the revenue it generates.
• Registration of the claim against assets subject to public registration, where what is disputed is ownership or a right over the asset.
• Innominate interim measures in declaratory proceedings, where what needs protecting is not a sum of money but a factual situation: continuity of supply, use of a distinctive sign, access to corporate information.

Which measure is available depends on the type of proceeding and the stage. In enforcement proceedings the measures are requested with the claim and granted alongside the payment order. In declaratory proceedings the judge weighs the apparent strength of the right invoked, the need for the measure and its effect on the other party.

The assets come first

Applying for attachment without knowing what to attach is an empty step that burns time and fees. The work starts with asset tracing through publicly available sources: the property registry, the commercial registry, the vehicle registry, the registry of security interests over movable assets, corporate filings and the debtor's holdings in other companies. That produces an application over specific, identified assets, and answers a prior question: whether the case makes economic sense at all.

Where the search turns up nothing, we say so. It is uncomfortable information but useful, because it moves the conversation from how we sue to whether suing is worth it.

The cost and the risk of applying

Interim relief is neither free nor harmless. As a rule a bond is required, and the applicant is liable for the damage caused if the case is later lost or if the measure turns out to be disproportionate to the obligation in dispute. So before applying we put the numbers on the table: what the bond costs, which assets to target, how much exposure the client takes on and what is gained in bargaining power. In some cases the recommendation is not to apply, or to apply over a single asset.

When it is your company that was frozen

The other side of this work is defence. An attachment that is wrongly granted or excessive paralyses a business: it freezes payroll and supplier payments, blocks bank credit and stalls live contracts. We act to lift it or cut it down:

• Appeals against the order granting the measure.
• Applications to limit the attachment where it exceeds the amount claimed.
• Opposition to seizure and third-party claims where the asset does not belong to the debtor.
• Substitution of the measure for security that is less damaging to operations.
• Release of assets that are exempt from attachment and of funds with protected purposes.
• Immediate follow-up with banks and registries to release whatever was withheld in excess.

Here the decisive factor is time: every day with frozen accounts carries an operating cost that a later decision does not give back. That is why the first submission is prepared with what already exists on the file, without waiting for documents that can be added later.

What the client receives

• A written report on the assets located and a recommendation on which measures to seek, over which assets and in what order.
• The application for interim relief filed, and the bond process handled.
• Follow-through on perfecting the measure: court orders, registrations and actual withholdings, which is where badly run attachments stall.
• Where the client is the party frozen, the submission opposing, limiting or lifting the measure, run through to the decision.