Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
This case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California as No. 4:26-cv-06945. The caption lists Directed Trust Company FBM Maria Dydo and others as plaintiffs and Jessica Roberts and others as defendants. The order does not describe the underlying claims, and the complaint and the preliminary injunction briefs were not among the materials reviewed, so the nature of the dispute and the specific relief sought is not reflected here. The order recounts only the procedural history of the motion.
Plaintiffs filed the motion for a preliminary injunction on July 9, 2026. On July 20, 2026, they moved to continue the hearing, and the court granted that request on July 31, 2026. Defendants filed their opposition on September 22, 2026, and plaintiffs replied on September 28, 2026. On October 2, 2026, the Clerk notified the parties that the action had been reassigned to the undersigned judge, that all pending motions were taken off calendar, and that the parties should re-notice pending motions for a new hearing date. As of October 14, 2026, plaintiffs had not re-noticed the motion.
The motion was therefore fully briefed but had no hearing date for twelve days after the reassignment notice, and more than three months had passed since it was first filed.
The Court’s Holding
The order is not a ruling on the preliminary injunction motion. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín reasoned that plaintiffs' delay in noticing the motion for a new hearing date, together with the passage of months since filing, suggests that plaintiffs are not at risk of immediate harm and are thus not entitled to preliminary injunctive relief. The court cited Caribbean Marine Services Co. v. Baldrige, 844 F.2d 668, 674 (9th Cir. 1988), for the rule that a plaintiff must demonstrate immediate threatened injury as a prerequisite to preliminary injunctive relief.
On that preliminary view, the court ordered plaintiffs to show cause why it should not deny the preliminary injunction for failure to demonstrate an immediate threat of irreparable harm. Plaintiffs must file a written response of no more than five pages by October 23, 2026, nine days after the order.
The language is framed as a suggestion and a question, not a finding. The court did not decide likelihood of success, the balance of equities, the public interest, or whether irreparable harm actually exists. It did not deny the motion, dismiss any claim, or enter judgment. The order does not say what follows if plaintiffs respond or fail to respond, and it sets no new hearing date.
Key Takeaways
- A party that leaves a preliminary injunction motion without a hearing date after reassignment risks the court treating that delay as inconsistent with a claim of immediate harm.
- When a clerk's notice takes pending motions off calendar and directs re-noticing, the moving party should act promptly, because this court treated the failure to re-notice as relevant to urgency.
- The court relied on the Ninth Circuit requirement of immediate threatened injury as a prerequisite to preliminary injunctive relief, citing Caribbean Marine.
- The order to show cause is a request for explanation, not a denial; the motion remains pending, and plaintiffs have until October 23, 2026 to respond in five pages or fewer.
- Nothing in the order resolves the merits, and the defendants' opposition and plaintiffs' reply remain before the court for later consideration.
Why It Matters
This is a short case-management order by a single district judge, and it carries no precedential weight beyond this case. Its value lies in showing how a court may test the immediacy element of a preliminary injunction using the movant's own litigation conduct, here the failure to re-notice a motion after a routine reassignment, even though the motion had been fully briefed. The legal rule comes from the cited Ninth Circuit authority; the order adds only an application to these procedural facts.
Much remains open. Plaintiffs may explain the delay, and the court may then set a hearing or rule on the papers. If the court is not persuaded, it has indicated it may deny the motion for lack of immediate irreparable harm. Any such denial would address interim relief only and would not decide the underlying claims.