## Facts

- Ragan sought tort damages in federal district court in Kansas for injuries from a highway accident on October 1, 1943.
- He filed the complaint on September 4, 1945, within Kansas’s two-year limitations period.
- Summons was served on Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co. on December 28, 1945, more than two years after the accident.
- Kansas law treated an action as “commenced” for limitations purposes when summons is served, not when the complaint is filed.
- Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 3 stated that a civil action is commenced by filing a complaint.

## Issues

1. In a diversity action, whether Kansas’s limitations rule requiring service of summons within the limitations period governs tolling, notwithstanding Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 3’s filing-based commencement rule.
2. Whether the federal filing of a complaint within the limitations period prevents the state-created claim from expiring when state law requires service within that period.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit and held the action time-barred.
- The Court applied Erie principles: a claim barred in state court must also be barred in federal court sitting in diversity.
- The Court treated Kansas’s service-based “commencement” rule as part of the state limitations scheme and accepted the court of appeals’ construction of Kansas law.
- Federal Rule 3 governed how a federal action is initiated procedurally, but it did not displace state law governing the duration and termination of the underlying state-law right.
- The Court rejected the argument that a different result follows because the claim expired under state law after the federal complaint was filed.

## Legal Principles

- In diversity cases, state law governing the limitations period and the event that tolls it applies, so that a state-law claim does not survive longer in federal court than it would in state court.
- A state rule defining when an action is “commenced” for limitations purposes may be treated as an integral part of the statute of limitations and applied in federal diversity litigation.
- Federal procedural rules concerning commencement (such as filing under Rule 3) do not extend the life of a state-created cause of action when state law requires a different act (such as service) to toll limitations.

## Conclusion

Because Kansas law required service of summons within two years to toll the statute of limitations, the plaintiff’s timely federal filing did not prevent the claim from expiring, and the diversity action was barred.


Ragan v. Merchs. Transfer & Warehouse Co., 337 U.S. 530 (1949)