Through television and movies, many people have become familiar with the concept of statutes of limitations—those procedural time limits that prevent a claim from being litigated or (in many courtroom dramas) a crime from being prosecuted after the passage of a certain amount of time. Far less attention has been given to the statute of limitations' first cousin: the statute of repose.

A statute of repose bars any suit that is brought after a specified period of time since the defendant's last culpable act or omission, even if the period ends before the plaintiff suffers a resulting injury. In securities litigation, the statute of repose can play a critical role in determining whether plaintiffs are able to proceed with their Section 10(b) claims. But courts have split over whether the statute of repose runs from the date of the last alleged misstatement or from each alleged misstatement individually. This article will explore that split.

Statutes of Repose v. Statutes of Limitations

To set the stage, statutes of limitations and statutes of repose both prevent a defendant from being sued after the passage of a fixed amount of time. But whereas a statute of limitations begins to run when an injury first occurs—and may be extended if the plaintiff did not and could not discover her injury until later—statutes of repose are more rigid.