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Dangana

Concept

How the deadline rules count time

The firm's own rules for counting time, the units and calendars they count against, and why editing a rule never moves a date already set.

How a firm counts time is data the firm keeps, not arithmetic hidden in the software. Each rule is written the way a practitioner would state it, and its calculator shows the date it produces before anyone relies on it.

What a rule says

  • The trigger: what starts time running, such as a writ served, a defence filed or a judgment delivered.
  • The count, the unit and the direction: fourteen days after, or seven days before.
  • The calendar it counts against.
  • Whether the trigger day counts, and what happens when the date lands on a day nobody works.
  • The section or rule it rests on, the matter types and courts it applies in, its priority, and its reminder ladder.
The firm's deadline rules with the trigger, count and unit of each.
The firm's deadline rules with the trigger, count and unit of each.

Units

UnitHow it counts
Calendar daysEvery day. With the trigger day counted, the eighth day falls seven days later.
Clear daysWhole days in between; the trigger day and the last day never count.
Business daysOnly days the calendar works, so it can never land on a day nobody works.
WeeksSeven calendar days each.
Months and yearsTo the same day of the month; 31 January plus a month is the last day of February, and 29 February plus a year is the 28th.

Calendars

  • Every day, for a limitation period the law does not suspend for a weekend.
  • Days the firm works, which the legal vacation does not close.
  • Days the courts sit, which the vacations binding that court do close.

Limitation periods

Limitation rules are their own kind, keyed on the cause of action, and seeded from the Limitation Act, 1972 (NRCD 54). Each period is data the firm's lawyer confirms.

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