Pacific Employers Insurance v. Sav-A-Lot of Winchester

OPINION

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge.

When a pleading is amended to change the party against whom a claim is asserted, as first year civil procedure students routinely learn, the amendment “relates back,” under certain conditions, to the date of the original pleading. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the conditions that must be satisfied if the relation-back doctrine is to apply are not always identical to the conditions that must be satisfied under state civil procedure rules — and the case at bar, where the applicability of Kentucky’s version of the relation-back doctrine is at…