How the deadline rules count time

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.

The rules are under Settings, Work management, Deadline rules, on the Rules tab. The Triggers tab beside it lists the events a rule counts from, and the causes of action a limitation period runs from.

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.

Whose step it is

Not every deadline is the firm's. Whose step says which party's step the rule counts: the claimant's, the defendant's, or whichever side the firm acts for. On a suit where the firm acts for the other side, the deadline is the other side's and is watched for default rather than worked.

• Answered by names the event whose recording meets the deadline, such as an appearance entered. Recording that event on the matter completes it.
• If the other side lets it pass is the step put to the lawyer when the other side's window closes unanswered, such as applying for judgment in default of appearance. Leave it empty and the lawyer is told to consider the step the rules give the firm.

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

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, Practice, 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.

When a rule is in force

Authority carries In force from and In force until, so a rule can be dated when the rules of court change. Left empty, a rule is in force from the start and still in force. A rule is used only for a trigger dated inside its in-force days, so the old rule keeps counting events before the change and the new one counts the events after it.

A second person for the critical ones

Turn on A second person confirms its deadlines on a rule, under Authority, and every deadline it suggests waits as unconfirmed until a second person confirms it; whoever recorded its trigger or created it cannot. Use it for the deadlines whose miss is serious, such as appeals and limitation periods; see Critical deadline checks.

The shipped rules for C.I. 47 (High Court), C.I. 59 (District Court) and C.I. 19 (Court of Appeal) each carry their citation and are marked To be confirmed by the firm's lawyer until the firm confirms them.

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. A matter's Limitation position section names the cause of action and the day it accrued, and the deadline is suggested from those, waiting for a second person to confirm it.