Short answer. Not for a preliminary injunction. Rule 58, Section 5 says No preliminary injunction shall be granted without hearing and prior notice. A temporary restraining order is the exception: in cases of extreme urgency it can issue ex parte, but only for seventy-two hours, and a summary hearing must follow within that time.
What the law says
No preliminary injunction shall be granted without hearing and prior notice to the party or person sought to be enjoined.
Rule 58, Section 5 — Preliminary injunction not granted without notice; exception. Read the full provision →
What the law says
the executive judge of a multiple-sala court or the presiding judge of a single-sala court may issue ex parte a temporary restraining order effective for only seventy-two hours from issuance
Rule 58, Section 5 — Preliminary injunction not granted without notice; exception. Read the full provision →
The rule, then the exception
Section 5 opens with a flat prohibition: a preliminary injunction cannot be granted without a hearing and prior notice to the person to be enjoined. An injunction can stop a business, a construction project or a transfer of property, so the person affected is entitled to be heard before it binds them. Everything after that first sentence describes narrow exceptions for urgency — and each is time-limited precisely because it departs from the ordinary requirement of notice.
The seventy-two-hour order
Where the matter is of extreme urgency and the applicant will suffer grave injustice and irreparable injury, the executive judge of a multiple-sala court or the presiding judge of a single-sala court may issue a temporary restraining order ex parte — without hearing you — effective for only seventy-two hours from issuance. The judge must then immediately comply with the requirements on service of summons and the documents to be served. Within those seventy-two hours the judge before whom the case is pending must conduct a summary hearing to decide whether the order should be extended until the injunction application can be heard.
The twenty-day order
The other route is a temporary restraining order effective for a period of twenty days, issued where the affidavits or verified application show that great or irreparable injury would result to the applicant before the matter can be heard on notice. Within that period the court must order the other party to show cause why the injunction should not be granted, determine within the same period whether to grant it, and issue the corresponding order. So even here the twenty days exist to create a hearing, not to substitute for one.
What this means if you have been restrained
An order that arrived without warning is almost certainly temporary, and the clock on it is short. The section builds in your opportunity to be heard — the summary hearing within seventy-two hours, or the show-cause order within the twenty-day period. Read the order to see which kind it is and what date it carries, because the response window is measured in days. Different periods apply to restraining orders issued by the Court of Appeals and by the Supreme Court.