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.
Whether Court vacation not reckoned applies to the count.
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.

Tasks it makes

A rule can carry the work each of its deadlines needs: Tasks it makes, on the rule, lists each task with when it falls due against the deadline (three working days before, on the day, one day after), its kind of work, and whom it goes to, read from the matter or a named person. A deadline makes its tasks once it is confirmed or found missed, never while it is only a suggestion, and each task links back to it. Moving the deadline moves its open tasks by the same rule and tells their holders. Completing the deadline asks whether its open tasks are completed, cancelled with the reason, or kept. Editing the tasks changes only deadlines that come into force or move afterwards.

Units

Unit	How it counts
Calendar days	Every day. With the trigger day counted, the eighth day falls seven days later.
Clear days	Whole days in between; the trigger day and the last day never count.
Business days	Only days the calendar works, so it can never land on a day nobody works.
Weeks	Seven calendar days each.
Months and years	To 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 counts, for a limitation period the law does not suspend for a weekend.
Working days: weekends, public holidays and the firm's closures skipped.
Court days: weekends, public holidays and the court's vacations skipped.

The court vacation

Order 80 rule 2 of the High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, C.I. 47, leaves the long vacation out of the time for serving, filing or amending a pleading, unless the court directs otherwise. Other time runs through it.

Each rule says which by Court vacation not reckoned. Where it is on, the vacation's days do not count, whatever the unit: seven days that meet a five-day vacation run five days longer, and a month runs on by the vacation days inside it. The shipped rules for entering appearance, filing a defence and filing a reply have it on; the appeal rules count through. Changing it makes a new version of the rule, so a date already confirmed never moves.

The vacations are the ones the court keeps, its class keeps, or the whole bench keeps, from Settings, Calendar settings, Court vacations. The date check on a rule asks for the court for that reason.

Where the court directs otherwise on one deadline, record the direction as an extension of that deadline, with the order and its date.

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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