## Facts

- A tractor-trailer hauling wheat for Cook & Co. collided with Ted Pierce’s car on an Oklahoma highway, killing Pierce and injuring passengers, including Stephen Ellenwood and Mike Davis.
- Pierce’s widow (for herself and a minor child) and Ellenwood filed separate tort actions; at Cook’s request, their cases were removed to federal court on diversity grounds.
- In the federal cases, the district court granted Cook summary judgment under then-controlling Oklahoma precedent holding a shipper not liable for the torts of an independent-contractor motor carrier.
- The Tenth Circuit affirmed, concluding federal motor-carrier statutes did not displace Oklahoma tort law and that Oklahoma law barred shipper liability on these facts.
- Davis’s related case was dismissed from federal court and refiled in state court in a manner that prevented removal.
- In Davis’s state case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court overruled the prior shipper-nonliability precedent and adopted a rule permitting shipper liability in this setting; Davis’s case was remanded and later settled favorably.
- After the state-law change and Davis’s favorable resolution, Pierce and Ellenwood moved in federal court for relief from the earlier final judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b).

## Issues

1. Whether Rule 60(b)(6) permits relief from a final diversity judgment when controlling state law later changes and yields materially different outcomes for parties injured in the same accident.
2. Whether the motion was timely under Rule 60(b)(6)’s “reasonable time” requirement despite being filed years after the original judgment.

## Decision

- The en banc Tenth Circuit granted relief under Rule 60(b)(6).
- The court set aside the prior federal judgment for Cook.
- The court held the intervening, controlling change in Oklahoma law—combined with the directly inconsistent state-court outcome from the same accident—constituted extraordinary circumstances justifying relief.
- The court concluded the motion was filed within a reasonable time because it followed shortly after the decisive state-law change and the related state-court resolution.
- The case was remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the new Oklahoma rule.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 60(b)(6) authorizes relief from a final judgment for “any other reason that justifies relief,” requires a showing of extraordinary circumstances, and is not subject to Rule 60(b)(1)–(3)’s one-year limit; it must be filed within a reasonable time.
- A supervening change in law ordinarily does not warrant reopening a final judgment, but an intervening change in controlling state law can qualify under Rule 60(b)(6) when equity demands it.
- In diversity cases, Erie principles favor outcomes in federal court that correspond, as closely as practicable, to those that would obtain in the state’s courts applying the state’s current authoritative law.
- When the same transaction produces sharply conflicting results in federal and state courts solely because the federal case reached final judgment before the state high court corrected the controlling rule, the resulting inequity can support Rule 60(b)(6) relief.

## Conclusion

The Tenth Circuit held that extraordinary circumstances existed where a later, authoritative change in Oklahoma law—arising from litigation over the same accident—produced irreconcilable state and federal results, and it used Rule 60(b)(6) to reopen the federal judgment and remand for proceedings under the revised state rule.


Pierce v. Cook & Co., 518 F.2d 720 (10th Cir. 1975) (en banc)