IMPORTANT CLIENT ALERT – Supreme Court Opens the Door to Broker Liability in Truck Accident Cases: What Transportation Companies Need to Know

Supreme Court Opens the Door to Broker Liability in Truck Accident Cases: What Transportation Companies Need to Know

On May 14, 2026, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, reversing the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and resolving a longstanding circuit split on one of the most consequential preemption questions in transportation law. The Court held that state-law tort claims that fall under the “safety exception” of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (the “FAAAA”) against freight brokers for interstate loads are not preempted by the FAAAA. The decision was 9-0, written by Justice Barrett, with a notable concurrence by Justice Kavanaugh joined by Justice Alito.

The ruling fundamentally alters the liability landscape for freight brokers, motor carriers, and shippers. For brokers, the practical shield of federal preemption is gone. For carriers, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (“FMCSA”) safety ratings and compliance histories are now directly relevant to commercial relationships in ways they previously were not. For shippers, risk allocation in transportation agreements warrants a fresh look.

This alert explains what happened, what the Court decided, what was left open, and what your business should do now.

Background: The FAAAA, Brokers, and Preemption

The FAAAA, enacted in 1994 and amended in 1995, was designed to deregulate the trucking industry by preventing states from imposing laws “related to a price, route, or service” of any motor carrier or broker “with respect to the transportation of property.” Congress’s goal was to open interstate markets and reduce the patchwork of conflicting state economic regulations that had fragmented the industry.

But Congress built in a critical carve-out: the FAAAA’s preemption provision for interstate transportation “shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” This safety exception was intended to preserve existing state police power over highway safety, including common-law tort duties.

For years, the question of whether this safety exception extended to tort claims against brokers, as opposed to carriers, divided the federal courts. The Seventh and Eleventh Circuits held that such claims were preempted, while the Sixth and Ninth Circuits held that they were not. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the split.

The Case: Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC

What Happened Freight broker C.H. Robinson Worldwide coordinated a shipment of plastic pots through Illinois using Caribe Transport II, LLC as the motor carrier. At the time C.H. Robinson hired Caribe Transport, the carrier held a “conditional” safety rating from the FMCSA, a designation indicating the carrier had been found deficient across multiple compliance categories, including driver qualification, hours of service, inspection and maintenance, and its recordable crash rate. During the transport, Caribe Transport’s driver, Yosniel Varela-Mojena, veered off course while operating a Mack Truck and struck Shawn Montgomery’s tractor-trailer, which was stopped on the side of the road. Montgomery’s leg was amputated and he sustained other severe and permanent injuries. Montgomery sued C.H. Robinson for negligently selecting a carrier it knew, or should have known, was likely to cause an accident. C.H. Robinson argued the claim was preempted by the FAAAA. The District Court and Seventh Circuit agreed. The Supreme Court reversed.

 

The Holding: Why the Safety Exception Saves the Claim

The Court’s analysis was textual and relatively straightforward. The safety exception preserves state authority to regulate safety “with respect to motor vehicles.” Following standard definitions and its own prior precedent in Dan’s City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey (2013), the Court construed “with respect to” to mean “concerns” or “regards.” A claim is saved by the exception if it “concerns” the vehicles used in transportation.

Applying that standard, the Court held that requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier “concerns” motor vehicles, most obviously, the trucks that will be operated on public highways to transport the goods. The negligent-hiring claim therefore falls within the safety exception and is not preempted.

Importantly, the Court declined to decide whether the FAAAA’s express preemption provision would otherwise cover the claim. The safety exception did all the work. The majority also clarified that the safety exception does not swallow the preemption provision wholesale: state laws related to motor carrier prices, routes, and services that have no relationship to safety remain preempted.

The Kavanaugh Concurrence: A Close Case With Unresolved Problems

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, filed a concurrence acknowledging that the brokers raised “a number of powerful points” and characterizing the case as closer than the majority’s opinion might suggest. His concurrence is important, however, because it identifies structural tensions in the ruling that will shape how lower courts apply it and how Congress may respond.

Arguments the Kavanaugh Concurrence Found Compelling for Brokers

• The FAAAA mandates minimum insurance for motor carriers but not for brokers, suggesting Congress may not have anticipated broker tort exposure of this kind.
• The FAAAA’s subsection (b) fully preempts state regulation of brokers for intrastate arrangements without any safety exception. Allowing state tort suits against brokers for interstate arrangements but not intrastate ones is, as Kavanaugh acknowledged, “a substantial anomaly” that plaintiff’s counsel had no good answer for.
• Brokers may not always be well-positioned to objectively assess carrier safety, and the litigation and insurance costs of defending negligent-hiring claims will be real even when brokers prevail.

Why Kavanaugh Joined the Majority Anyway

• The overall structure of the FAAAA was economic deregulation, not safety deregulation. Congress left state tort suits against motor carriers intact, and it is difficult to read the statute as simultaneously allowing those suits while immunizing upstream brokers who select the same unsafe carriers.
• Federal law imposes no meaningful safety obligations on brokers’ carrier selection. The FMCSA requires brokers to use properly registered carriers but does not otherwise impose carrier-selection safety standards. Interpreting the FAAAA to preempt state tort claims would leave brokers in a “black hole” with no meaningful safety accountability at either the federal or state level.
• Truck safety is a matter of life and death. In 2022, approximately 500,000 reported truck accidents resulted in roughly 5,000 deaths and 114,000 injuries in the United States. Congress did not, in an economic-deregulation statute, “subtly slice and dice” state tort law to immunize one category of industry participant from all tort liability.

What This Means in Practice

The decision has immediate, concrete implications across the industry.

What “Reasonable Care” Means for Brokers After Montgomery

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence is the most practically useful guide to what the due-care standard looks like post-Montgomery. He stressed, and plaintiff’s own counsel confirmed at oral argument, that brokers who act reasonably should be able to defend against these claims successfully. The standard is negligence, not strict liability.

Kavanaugh quoted plaintiff’s counsel directly: brokers “just have to hire carriers that actually have a reasonable policy,” and “the broker is not going to have a problem if it’s asking the hard questions of the carrier.” The proximate-cause requirement in state tort law also provides an important check: a broker who exercised reasonable care will have strong defenses even if an accident occurs.

What does reasonable care look like? Based on the record in this case and the Court’s reasoning, the following factors are central:

• Verifying FMCSA operating authority and safety rating before engagement and recognizing that most active carriers have no formal FMCSA safety rating at all. “Unrated” is not a safe default; it means the carrier’s safety practices have never been independently evaluated by federal investigators.
• Reviewing FMCSA’s SAFER system data, including out-of-service history and crash records, not merely checking that a carrier is registered.
• Declining to use carriers with “Conditional” safety ratings absent documented exceptional circumstances.
• Applying a heightened, affirmative vetting framework for unrated carriers, that may include a review of CSA BASIC scores in all seven categories, confirming no scores exceed FMCSA intervention thresholds; verifying insurance directly; and requesting safety documentation. The vetting record for an unrated carrier should be more detailed than for a rated one, because the broker cannot point to any FMCSA determination to justify its decision.
• Documenting the vetting process in writing, including what was reviewed and when.
• Conducting periodic re-verification of approved carriers, especially where safety ratings change after initial onboarding.
• Having contractual mechanisms, such as representations, warranties, and notification obligations, that put carriers on notice of the broker’s expectations and document reliance on carrier disclosures.

A broker who can demonstrate this kind of systematic, documented process has a strong negligence defense. A broker who selected on price alone, without any meaningful safety review, does not.

The Interstate/Intrastate Anomaly: An Open Problem

One of the most consequential but unresolved questions after Montgomery is the anomaly created by the FAAAA’s structure. The safety exception that saved Montgomery’s claim appears only in subsection (c), which governs interstate broker arrangements. Subsection (b), which governs intrastate broker arrangements, contains no safety exception, meaning state tort claims against brokers for intrastate loads remain fully preempted.

In plain terms: a broker who selects an unsafe carrier to move freight across state lines can now be sued for negligent hiring. The same broker arranging the same carrier for a purely intrastate load faces no such exposure under the FAAAA. Kavanaugh acknowledged this was “a substantial anomaly” but concluded the text controlled and that it was “better to live with the mystery than to rewrite the statute.”

The practical implications of this distinction:

• Brokers whose operations span both interstate and intrastate loads should not assume the distinction offers real protection. Discovery in accident litigation may not respect it, and inconsistent vetting practices across load types may be difficult to defend.
• Contracts that cover both interstate and intrastate movements should be reviewed to ensure risk allocation provisions reflect the different legal exposures.
• The anomaly creates a potential congressional fix. Brokers and their trade associations will almost certainly seek legislation clarifying the intrastate preemption question, potentially extending the safety exception to subsection (b) or narrowing it in subsection (c). Until Congress acts, however, the current asymmetry governs.
• State law may still impose duties on brokers for intrastate arrangements through mechanisms other than negligent hiring. The FAAAA’s preemption of intrastate broker regulation is broad but not unlimited, and different states may develop their own doctrines.

How We Can Help

Our transportation and logistics practice is prepared to advise clients across the industry on the implications of this decision. Specifically, we offer:

• Contract review and revision: auditing existing broker-carrier and broker-shipper agreements for gaps in safety representations, indemnification, and insurance; drafting updated provisions to reflect post-Montgomery risk allocation.
• Carrier compliance counseling: advising motor carriers on FMCSA safety rating remediation, CSA score management, and documentation practices that protect against negligent-hiring claims filed against the brokers who engage them.
• Broker liability defense: advising on litigation strategy, reasonable-care defense development, and carrier vetting protocol design for brokers facing or anticipating claims.
• Insurance review: identifying gaps in broker liability and contingent cargo coverage in light of this decision.
• Interstate/intrastate structure: advising on how to structure transportation arrangements in light of the emerging legal asymmetry between interstate and intrastate broker exposure.

Contact Us We invite you to contact our office to discuss how Montgomery affects your operations, agreements, and risk exposure. Whether you are a broker, carrier, or shipper, the landscape has changed and the time to act is now. Contact us to schedule a consultation at 954-616-4404 or by email a[email protected]

 

Please note that the information in this article is current as of June 23, 2026. The content of this article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal counsel on any subject matter. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information in, or accessible through, this article without seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue.