Clients in the transportation and logistics industry should be aware of a significant shift in liability exposure following a recent United States Supreme Court decision. The ruling has immediate implications for freight brokers and their insurers, eliminating a key defense that has often limited litigation risk. Going forward, claims that previously had a viable likelihood of getting dismissed at the motion to dismiss, or summary judgment stages, are now likely to proceed into full discovery, increasing both defense costs and potential exposure. As a result, freight brokers should reassess their risk profiles, internal vetting practices, and litigation strategies in light of this development.
Introduction
On May 14, 2026, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9-0 decision that will reshape transportation liability litigation for years to come. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the court held that freight brokers may be sued under state law for negligently selecting unsafe motor carriers, and that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) does not preempt those claims. The decision eliminates a defense that brokers have relied upon for years and sets the stage for a more complex and costly era of litigation across the industry—one where cases that once could resolve early will now proceed through full discovery, with potentially higher exposure for all parties involved.
How We Got Here
The legal journey to the Supreme Court was years in the making. Plaintiff Shawn Montgomery sustained catastrophic injuries, including the amputation of his leg, when a truck operated by Caribe Transport II veered off course on an Illinois highway and struck his parked vehicle. C.H. Robinson, one of the largest freight brokers in the country, had arranged the shipment. Montgomery alleged that C.H. Robinson knew, or should have known, that Caribe Transport carried a conditional safety rating and had documented deficiencies in driver qualifications, hours of service compliance, and vehicle maintenance, and that dispatching that carrier was unreasonably dangerous.
The district court dismissed the claim on preemption grounds, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed, relying on its 2023 precedent holding that the FAAAA preempted negligent hiring claims against brokers. But federal courts were deeply divided. The Sixth and Ninth Circuits had allowed similar claims to proceed, while the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits had consistently dismissed them. That circuit split made Supreme Court review almost inevitable, and the Court accepted the case to resolve it once and for all.
What the Court Did—and Did Not Do
The Supreme Court held that negligent hiring claims against freight brokers fall within the FAAAA’s safety exception and therefore are not preempted by federal law.
The Court interpreted the FAAAA’s existing safety exception to encompass negligent hiring claims against brokers and held that those claims survive preemption. Justice Barrett, writing for a unanimous Court, concluded that requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier directly concerns the motor vehicles that will be on the road as a result of that selection.
The practical consequences of that holding, however, are enormous. For years, brokers in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits, and state courts across the country had a reliable preemption argument and an exit from litigation through a well-argued preemption motion. Preemption is no longer a reliable dispositive defense to interstate negligent hiring claims against brokers.
The Court did leave one significant question open. The FAAAA’s separate subsection governing intrastate broker services contains no safety exception, and the Court deliberately declined to resolve whether preemption might still apply to negligent hiring claims on purely intrastate loads. This remains one of the few potential defense avenues going forward and should be carefully preserved in appropriate cases.
Vicarious Liability: The Question the Court Left Untouched
Perhaps equally significant to what the Court decided is what it chose not to decide. Vicarious liability, the theory that a broker can be held responsible for a carrier’s or its driver’s negligent conduct based on the degree of control the broker exercised over the carrier’s operations, is a separate claim that was not before the Court in Montgomery.
Vicarious liability claims against brokers are common in serious trucking litigation and will continue to be pursued alongside negligent hiring claims going forward. Those claims survive independently of the preemption question, and in many high-value cases they will be pleaded alongside negligent hiring theories, giving plaintiffs two distinct pathways to broker liability. Courts will now need to work through how these theories interact, how juries are instructed, and how liability is allocated across multiple defendants.
The Merits Defense: Where the Fight Moves Now
With preemption off the table for interstate cases, the litigation will not disappear. It will shift to a far more expensive and unpredictable arena. The central question in every broker case going forward is whether the broker exercised reasonable care in selecting the carrier.
Many brokers rely on a carrier’s active FMCSA operating authority, a basic safety rating check, and longstanding market relationships. That may have been sufficient when preemption kept these cases out of court. It may not be sufficient now.
Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence provides the defense bar a useful anchor. He wrote explicitly that brokers who act reasonably and select reputable carriers should be able to successfully defend these suits, making clear that the Court did not intend to make brokers insurers of every load they arrange. Proximate causation also remains a viable defense. Defense counsel should focus early on developing both vetting evidence and causation defenses. Defense counsel who builds the causation record aggressively from the outset will be better positioned than those who focus solely on the vetting question.
Who Is Now in the Crosshairs
A significant downstream consequence is the potential exposure of third-party carrier vetting platforms. One of the more significant and underappreciated downstream consequences of this ruling is the potential exposure of third-party carrier vetting platforms—companies that brokers rely upon to screen, vet, and onboard motor carriers. If a broker can demonstrate that it followed an established, documented vetting process through a reputable third-party platform, that will help its defense. But if that platform failed to flag a dangerous carrier, provided incomplete safety information, or missed red flags that reasonable diligence would have caught, those platforms could find themselves drawn into the litigation alongside the brokers that relied on them. As brokers face mounting pressure to demonstrate rigorous due diligence, the tools and vendors they use to conduct that diligence will come under the same scrutiny.
Insurance and Coverage Implications
The Montgomery decision arrives against an already strained insurance backdrop. The federal minimum liability limit for motor carriers has not been updated since the 1980s and is widely acknowledged as wholly inadequate against the nuclear verdict environment of today’s courtrooms. With brokers now exposed as an additional deep-pocketed defendant, the pressure on Congress and the FMCSA to modernize those minimums will only intensify. Any increase will be politically difficult, as higher minimums place the heaviest burden on small owner-operators already operating on thin margins, but the direction of travel is clear, and legislative movement on this front should be anticipated.
For insurers, the immediate task is reassessment. Reserves on open broker files need to be re-evaluated against a full merits-based litigation trajectory, one that includes complete discovery, expert witnesses, and potential jury exposure. Coverage counsel should also be examining whether existing broker policies are structured to respond to the expanded liability environment this decision creates.
Where We Go From Here
Montgomery resolves the preemption question for interstate broker negligent hiring claims, but in doing so it opens a far more complex chapter for the industry. Courts must now work through what reasonable care actually means in the brokerage context, how juries will be instructed in multi-defendant trucking cases involving both negligent hiring and vicarious liability theories, and how liability will be allocated across brokers, carriers, shippers, and vetting vendors.
Legislative or regulatory responses remain possible but uncertain. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence, which emphasized broker accountability in terms of public safety while acknowledging the ruling’s difficulty, can be read as an implicit invitation to seek legislative clarification. Whether Congress acts, and on what timeline, will shape the industry’s legal landscape for years to come.
What is certain is this: the vetting process is now the product. Every carrier selection decision is a potential exhibit in future litigation. Brokers that invest in documented, systematic vetting protocols will be in a fundamentally different legal position than those that do not. The cost of building that infrastructure is real. The cost of not building it is now potentially catastrophic.
The Case for Specialized Defense Counsel
The Montgomery decision underscores the importance of experienced defense counsel with a deep understanding of freight brokerage operations and substantial experience in the logistic and transportation industry. Defending a freight broker, shippers, motor carriers, freight-forwarders, and others within the chain of transport in the post-Montgomery landscape requires industry-specific knowledge, including how carriers are selected, how vetting platforms function, and what constitutes reasonable due diligence. It also requires the ability to distinguish between legitimate commercial judgment and actionable negligence. Counsel who lack familiarity with the operational realities of freight brokerage and the transportation industry as a whole may struggle to develop the kind of well-documented, credible defense contemplated by Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence.
Beyond the merits, broker cases now involve complex multi-theory litigation—negligent hiring, vicarious liability, and potentially claims against third-party vetting vendors—each requiring distinct legal strategies that must be coordinated from the earliest stages of a case. Discovery in these matters will be aggressive and targeted, with plaintiffs’ counsel focused on internal communications, carrier selection records, and vetting protocols. A defense team that has never navigated that landscape before will be learning at their client’s expense.
With case values rising, nuclear verdicts becoming more common, and brokers now firmly established as high-value targets in catastrophic trucking litigation, the difference between experienced broker defense counsel with a deep understanding of transportation industry, and generalist trucking attorneys is not academic. It is the difference between a defensible case and an indefensible one.
Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani has been representing freight brokers, transportation, and logistics clients for many years, developing a deep understanding of the industry, its practices, and the legal theories that plaintiffs deploy against it. As a firm with a presence in all 50 states, we are uniquely positioned to respond to the national implications of the Montgomery decision, whether that means defending clients in jurisdictions where these cases are now being filed for the first time, coordinating multi-state litigation strategy, or helping clients build the documented vetting infrastructure that will define their defensibility in the years ahead. The legal landscape has shifted, and the risks have increased. We have the experience, the reach, and the industry knowledge to help our clients navigate it.