The Schedule: How to Find a Period of Limitation

In one line

The sections tell you how to count; the Schedule tells you how long, and from when.

The three columns

Every entry in the Schedule has the same three columns, and the third is the one students forget.

Column 1, description of the suit, appeal or application. What the proceeding is. Column 2, period of limitation. The length. Column 3, time from which the period begins to run. The starting point.

Column 3 decides more cases than column 2. Two suits may both have three years, and be decided differently because one runs from the date of the breach and the other from the date the plaintiff had knowledge. Any answer to a problem must give both the period and the starting point, in the Schedule's own words.

Remember the vocabulary from section 2, because the examiner uses it precisely. The "period of limitation" is the figure in column 2. The "prescribed period" is that figure computed under the Act, after applying sections 4 to 24. See [Object and Features of the Limitation Act 1963].

How the Schedule is arranged

The Schedule contains 137 Articles in three Divisions.

FIRST DIVISION, SUITS, Articles 1 to 113, in ten Parts:

Part I, suits relating to accounts, Articles 1 to 5 Part II, suits relating to contracts, Articles 6 to 55 Part III, suits relating to declarations, Articles 56 to 58 Part IV, suits relating to decrees and instruments, Articles 59 and 60 Part V, suits relating to immovable property, Articles 61 to 67 Part VI, suits relating to movable property, Articles 68 to 71 Part VII, suits relating to tort, Articles 72 to 91 Part VIII, suits relating to trusts and trust property, Articles 92 to 96 Part IX, suits relating to miscellaneous matters, Articles 97 to 112 Part X, suits for which there is no prescribed period, Article 113

SECOND DIVISION, APPEALS, Articles 114 to 117.

THIRD DIVISION, APPLICATIONS, in two Parts: Part I, applications in specified cases, Articles 118 to 136 Part II, other applications, Article 137

Knowing the arrangement is not decoration. It is how you find an Article you have not memorised: identify what the proceeding is about, go to the Part, and read down it.

The two residuary Articles

These are the two to know by heart, because they are the answer whenever nothing else fits, and they are asked directly.

Article 113: any suit for which no period of limitation is provided elsewhere in the Schedule, three years, from when the right to sue accrues.