When a natural disaster or another cause for which a party or other concerned person bears no responsibility makes a period or deadline impossible to keep, what happens to the time left?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
In the practice file for this exercise, we read the paper that sets the period or deadline, any record of the natural disaster or other event, the correspondence showing the day that cause began and ended, and any paper showing why the cause was one for which the party or other concerned person bore no responsibility.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the text at face value: where a natural disaster or another cause for which the party or other concerned person bears no responsibility makes it impossible to keep a period or deadline, the running of the period is suspended, so the time left when the cause began is preserved and is what remains after the day the cause ends.
Another reading stresses what the provision does not set out: it does not say what counts as a cause for which the party or other concerned person bears no responsibility, nor how the file fixes the day that cause ended, so the suspension turns on facts the papers must establish.
Your judgment
What in the file could show that the cause was one for which the party or other concerned person bore no responsibility, rather than one they did bear responsibility for?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to set what a file must show, or if a decision defines what counts as a cause for which a party or other concerned person bears no responsibility or how the day the cause ends is fixed.