§ 25-1064.Temporary injunctions and restraining orders; courts and judges empowered to issue; conditions; temporary restraining order granted without notice; requirements; actions involving irrigation water; notice, how given.

Section 25-1064 is the procedural heart of Nebraska’s temporary injunction and restraining order practice, and it draws a sharp line between the two. A temporary injunction may be granted at the start of the case or any time before judgment, but subsection (2) states flatly that no temporary injunction may be granted without notice to the adverse party. Notice, in other words, is the default and the rule for anything called a temporary injunction.

A temporary restraining order is different, and the difference is the entire point of the TRO. Any district judge may grant one without notice to the adverse party or that party’s attorney, but only on a tight two-part showing: specific facts in an affidavit must make it clear that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will happen before the adverse party can be heard, and the applicant or the applicant’s attorney must certify in writing what efforts, if any, were made to give notice and why notice should be excused. Every TRO granted without notice must carry the date and hour it was issued, be filed immediately with the clerk of the district court and entered of record, spell out the injury and explain both why it is irreparable and why notice was skipped, and expire by its own terms within ten days unless extended once for a like period on good cause shown, or for longer if the enjoined party agrees — with the reasons for any extension entered of record. Once a TRO issues without notice, the applicant must push the motion for a temporary injunction to a hearing at the earliest possible time, ahead of every case except older matters of the same kind; if the applicant does not follow through, the court dissolves the TRO. The party who was restrained without notice can also move to dissolve or modify it on two days’ notice, or on whatever shorter notice the court allows.

When no district judge is available in the county, a county judge can grant an equivalent no-notice TRO under the identical showing of immediate irreparable harm, but with an added step: the county judge must direct that reasonable notice go to the restrained party to appear before the district court and show cause why a temporary injunction should not issue. The same ten-day expiration and extension rules apply, except that any extension comes from the district court rather than the county judge.

The remaining subsections address cases where the relief sought involves delivering irrigation water and the Chief Water Officer, as defined in section 25-1062.01, is a party. In that narrow category, no restraining order or temporary injunction may be granted at the start of the case unless notice by registered or certified letter has gone out seventy-two hours before the hearing to the Chief Water Officer, the relevant water division supervisor, and every appropriator whose delivery rights might be affected. At that hearing, the Chief Water Officer, appropriators, and riparian owners are entitled to be heard on whether the order should issue and, if so, on the bond amount. Anyone injured or likely to be injured by the order may also intervene in the irrigation-water case.