[LEAPSECS] Do lawyers care (know) about leap seconds?

Clive D.W. Feather clive at davros.org
Tue Sep 30 15:55:19 EDT 2014


Hal Murray said:
> How many contracts worry about seconds?

Ones to deal with electronic trading, domain name registration, and such
topics.

> I think it's common for contracts to start one minute before or after 
> midnight to avoid an English language ambiguity.  Things like "midnight 
> Monday" might be the midnight at the start of Monday or the midnight at the 
> end of Monday so contracts usually use 00:01 or 23:59.  A bit of googling 
> found a web page describing that, but I don't know what they teach in law 
> schools.

They didn't suggest it on my law course.

I found a law case (sorry, no cite) that was decided on a matter of 8
seconds - from memory, an email sent 8 seconds after a midnight deadline.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
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