I can change it to throw a ServiceException instead of using the existing 'minimum value' default if that is what you would like.  I agree that fail fast would be good, and I was concerned about 'breaking it' when we had a plausible second choice of what to do.  On the other hand, using that second choice obscures that any errant user default has occurred.  As you noted, if no error, should at least have a log statement.