If you are writing an application that must deal with durations of time, then please take a look at Joda-Time which has class specifically for handling Durations, Intervals, and Periods. Your getDuration() method looks like it could return a Joda-Time Interval:
DateTime start = new DateTime(2004, 12, 25, 0, 0, 0, 0);
DateTime end = new DateTime(2005, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
public Interval getInterval() {
Interval interval = new Interval(start, end);
}