Well it's only birthday law in the sense that it has to do with my birthday, but, hey, it's my blog. The law (well, former law): Leap year day and the day before it are one day. (True, at the time leap year day wasn't necessarily my own February 29, but the law remained in effect into the era of the February 29 convention.) Here's the scoop, from the Australian Lex Scripta site:
By a Statute of Henry III, entitled de Anno et die Bissextili, it was provided that, in a leap year, the bissextile day "and the Day next going before, shall be accounted for one Day". The rational compulsion behind this legislative fiction has been lost in the mists of time. Indeed, it is not even certain when it was enacted: some references assign to it the regnal year 21 Henry III (that is, 1236), whilst others assign to it the regnal year 40 Henry III (that is, 1256).
In the time of Lord Coke, at least, the fiction of treating the bissextile and the preceding day as a single day was alive and well. In England, the Act of Henry III was not repealed until 1879. In some Australian States, it has also been expressly repealed: for example, in New South Wales in 1969. Where it has not been expressly repealed, the suggestion is that it has no continuing application, perhaps because it was impliedly repealed by the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1751 [the year in which the Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use was enacted; the Act took effect in 1752 -EV].
The point arose before Burchett J. in Re Clubb; ex parte Clubb v. Westpac Banking Corporation, in which the respondent bank sought to rely on the statute of Henry III to justify its method of charging interest on customers' accounts. The evidence showed that the bank had divided its annual interest rate by 365, and added this amount of interest to the customer's account for each day, producing the result that, in a leap year, the customer was charged an extra day's interest over the agreed annual rate. Not surprisingly, Burchett J. held that this was impermissible ....
Related Posts (on one page):
- More Birthday Law:
- Birthday Law:
There must have been 2 years counted as 1 in there somewhere. :•)
Frederic, born on February 29th, is bound to serve until he is 21, but learns in horror that the contract actually states "until his 21st birthday", which means that the contract now binds him until 1940. Working backwards from this, it means that he was either born in 1852 or 1856, and the play takes place in late February and early March of 1873 or 1877, (all this turns on whether Frederic, who is heroic but easily confused, knew that 1900 would not be a leap year).
But if February 29 would have been considered part of February 28th until 1879, then his actual birthday would be February 28th, there would be no ambiguity in the contract, and the entire plot collapses a third of the way into act II!
What is suspicious is that the play itself didn't open until the end of 1879. Were Gilbert, Sullivan, or others connected with the production involved in lobbying to repeal the law which prevented their plot from working?
That works, as long as the loan is for the entire year. If you take out your loan on March 1st of a leap year, then you pay a little too much each day, without getting to skip leap day.
Can you provide the citation for In Re Clubb; ex parte Clubb v. Westpac Banking Corporation? (Is this stuff on Westlaw/Lexis?). I've won a similar issue initially (days which should be included/excluded in interest calculation), but the other side has filed an appeal. I would love to cite something this old on a single day's interest.
By the way, the reason for the varying calculations of 360 or 365 days per year is rooted in charging annual interest monthly in twelve equal installments. The "standard" month is 30 days (30 x 12 = 360). Mortgages (payable monthly) usually use 360 days, so that a partial month's interest can be charged accordingly. Judgment interest usually uses a 365-day year, as it is an undivided annual rate.