United States District Courts (simply known as the Habeas Rules), which provides that the State's answer to a habeas petition "must state whether any claim in the petition is barred by a failure to exhaust state remedies, a procedural bar, non-retroactivity, or a statute of limitations." Day's argument was characterized by the Court as relying primarily on Habeas Rule 4, which requires district courts to "promptly examine" petitions and dismiss "if it plainly appears... that the petitioner is not entitled to relief." Day argued that this limited a court's ability to raise AEDPA's limitation sua sponte to the preanswer, initial screening stage, and that after that point, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governed the proceedings. Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(c), the statute of limitations defense is forfeited if it is not asserted in its answer, or an amendment thereto, just as the State of Florida failed to do. However, the Court believed that were it to accept Day's position, courts would rarely be positioned to raise AEDPA's time bar sua sponte because information essential to the time calculation is often absent until the State has filed, along with its answer, copies of documents from the state-court proceedings, as was the case in Day's proceedings. The Court instead agreed with the State of Florida, which argued that "[t]he considerations of comity, finality, and the expeditious handling of habeas proceedings that motivated AEDPA...counsel against an excessively rigid or formal approach to the affirmative defenses" such as the statute of limitations. The State argued that Granberry was instructive in establishing that courts instead have the discretion in each case to decide "whether the administration of justice" would be better served by reaching the merits of the petition or dismissing it because of the statute of limitations, and a petition should not be deemed timely simply because a government attorney miscounted the days. The Court observed that the State could have simply amended its answer had the Magistrate Judge informed it of its computation error rather than acting sua sponte. "Recognizing that an amendment to the State's answer might have obviated this controversy," the Court wrote, "we see no dispositive difference between that route, and the one taken here." The Court concluded by emphasizing the need for the parties to receive fair notice and an opportunity to be heard before a court acts on its own initiative. Courts must also ensure that