Law360, New York (April 26, 2016, 10:45 AM EDT) -- A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has again focused attention on the unique role that statutes of repose can play in environmental litigation. In Stahle v. CTS Corp., decided March 2, 2016, the court reversed the lower federal court and determined that "disease claims" are not subject to the North Carolina statute of repose, which is contained in North Carolina General Statutes Section 1-52(16), a law that, since 1979, has established defenses to personal injury and property damage lawsuits based on a state statute of limitations as well as a statute of repose. The lower court, presiding over a personal injury claim that the release of toxic pollutants into a body of water adjacent to a former CTS manufacturing facility had caused the plaintiff to contract leukemia, determined that the law, in particular the law's statute of repose, was not ambiguous and that it clearly applied to this lawsuit which was based on an injury that allegedly occurred many years ago. The plaintiff and his family moved away from this area in 1968, CTS sold the facility in 1987 and the lawsuit was not filed until 2014. Accordingly, the court dismissed the lawsuit....