What the Supreme Court Did on May 14, 2026
On May 14, 2026, a unanimous Supreme Court closed a twenty-year escape hatch for freight brokers. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the Court ruled 9-0 that state-law negligent-hiring claims against a broker are not preempted by federal law. A broker that hands a load to an unsafe trucking company can be sued in state court when that truck hurts someone.
Here is the plain version of the mechanics. For twenty years, freight brokers argued that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, the FAAAA, preempted state tort claims against them because those claims were "related to" a broker's prices, routes, or services. Lower courts split. Brokers kept winning dismissals. The Supreme Court rejected the argument. The FAAAA's general preemption clause at 49 U.S.C. sec. 14501(c)(1) does reach these claims, but the safety exception at 49 U.S.C. sec. 14501(c)(2)(A) preserves them. Picking the carrier is a safety decision. States get to police it.
On the ground, this means something specific. If a broker handed a load to a carrier with bad CSA scores, prior violations, or a vetting file full of holes, and that carrier's truck killed or maimed someone, the broker is now a defendant. Not a witness. Not a paper-shuffler who collected a fee and walked. A defendant who answers in state court for who they put on the road.
The Preemption Shield That Just Fell
For two decades, freight brokers carried a get-out-of-court card called the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994. The FAAAA was written to deregulate trucking prices and routes. Brokers stretched it into something else entirely, a federal preemption argument that swallowed state negligence law. The pitch to judges was simple. A state-court jury holding a broker liable for picking a dangerous carrier would be "regulating" the broker's service. Federal law forbids that. Case dismissed.
It worked for years. Brokers walked out of courthouses in Louisiana, Texas, and everywhere else while the trucking company and the driver absorbed the verdict alone.
That argument is dead. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on May 14, 2026 that the FAAAA's safety exception, the carve-out at 49 U.S.C. sec. 14501(c)(2)(A) preserving state authority over motor vehicles, covers the exact negligent-hiring claim brokers had been killing at the motion-to-dismiss stage. Picking who drives an 80,000-pound truck down I-10 is a safety decision. State common-law duties are part of state safety authority. Congress did not quietly take that away when it deregulated freight rates.
The practical effect is immediate. A broker that handed a load to a carrier with bad CSA scores, prior out-of-service orders, lapsed insurance, or a vetting file that exists only on paper can no longer point to federal preemption and disappear. The shield is gone. The broker is a defendant now, in state court, answering to a state-court jury under ordinary negligence rules, the same rules that govern every other business in Louisiana that puts dangerous people in a position to hurt someone.
The Crash Behind the Case: Shawn Montgomery
In 2017, Shawn Montgomery was driving on an Illinois highway when an 18-wheeler operated by Caribe Transport II, LLC crossed into his path. He lost part of his leg. The driver and the carrier were the obvious defendants. Montgomery also sued the freight broker, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, that had handed Caribe the load in the first place.
The theory was straightforward and, until May 14, 2026, almost impossible to get to a jury. The broker, Montgomery alleged, had selected a carrier with a conditional FMCSA rating and documented deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service, maintenance, and crash rate, and put that carrier on the road hauling freight through traffic. The broker was negligent in who it hired. That is negligent hiring, the same theory you would use against any business that sends a dangerous contractor into the public and someone gets hurt. Brokers had spent twenty years arguing they were immune from that claim because federal law preempted it.
The lower courts split. The Seventh Circuit ruled for the broker on preemption grounds. Montgomery took it to the Supreme Court. On May 14, 2026, the Court ruled 9-0 that his negligent-hiring claim could proceed. The man who lost his leg in 2017 got his answer in 2026: the broker has to answer for the carrier it picked. Every plaintiff hurt by an unsafe carrier a broker selected now has the same path.
Why This Matters on I-10, I-20, and I-49
The Gulf South is broker country. Freight moving out of the Port of Houston, the Port of New Orleans, the Port of South Louisiana, and the chemical corridor between Baton Rouge and Lake Charles does not move because a trucking company picked up the phone. It moves because a broker matched a load to a carrier on a load board, often in minutes, often based on price. That broker decided which trucking company would be running an 80,000-pound rig past your kid's school bus on I-10 outside Lafayette, past your work commute on I-20 through Shreveport, past your family on I-49 between Alexandria and the Arkansas line.
Until May 14, 2026, that decision carried no consequence for the broker. The trucking company carried the minimum federal insurance, often $1 million, and when a catastrophic 18-wheeler crash blew past that number, amputation, brain injury, a dead spouse, the broker walked. The broker often had deeper pockets and real assets. The carrier's policy got tendered, the carrier folded, and the family was left holding medical bills the insurance did not touch.
Montgomery changes the math on every serious truck crash case in this region. If the broker that arranged the load skipped the safety check, ignored bad CSA scores, ignored a pattern of out-of-service violations, ignored an authority that had been revoked and reinstated, that broker is now a defendant. In a corridor this dependent on brokered freight, that is not a marginal change. That is a new layer of accountability over every interstate in Louisiana and east Texas.
What a Plaintiff Still Has to Prove
Montgomery opens the courthouse door. It does not walk you through it. The broker is not automatically liable because one of their carriers hurt someone. This is not strict liability. Ordinary Louisiana negligence rules still apply, and you have to prove every element.
First, duty. The broker owed a duty of reasonable care in selecting the carrier it put on the road. After Montgomery, that duty is no longer preempted by federal law. It lives in state tort law, and the safety exception preserves it.
Second, breach. The broker hired a carrier it should not have hired. This is where the vetting file matters. A reasonable broker pulls the carrier's CSA scores, checks the out-of-service rate, looks at recent violations, confirms authority and insurance, and documents the review. A broker who skipped those steps, or who saw red flags and dispatched the load anyway, breached the duty. So how do you measure a broker? Ask how they vet carriers and how they document it. A broker who cannot describe their process or produce a file is a broker who did not have one.
Third, causation. The unsafe carrier the broker selected caused the crash that hurt you. The carrier's poor safety profile has to connect to what actually happened on the road, a fatigue-violation history tied to a driver who fell asleep, a brake-maintenance pattern tied to a runaway truck, an hours-of-service record tied to a driver who should have been off-duty.
Fourth, damages. The injuries, the medical bills, the lost wages, the life you do not get back. Same proof a plaintiff has always put on against the trucking company. Now it extends to the broker that picked them.
The Discovery Surface the Ruling Opens
Montgomery changes cases, not just headlines, because it puts the broker's paper inside the lawsuit. Before May 14, a broker could sit on its vetting file and watch the trucking company absorb the verdict. Now the file is fair game, and the file is where brokers live or die.
Start with the carrier-selection record. Every reputable broker claims to check a motor carrier before tendering a load. The question is whether they actually did. Discovery now reaches the CSA score the broker pulled (or did not pull), the FMCSA safety rating in the file, prior crash history, out-of-service rates, insurance verification, and the broker's written carrier-qualification policy. Ask for the file. Ask what their threshold was. Ask what carriers they rejected last quarter and why. A broker that cannot produce a vetting record, or whose record is a printout dated the day after the crash, is a broker in trouble.
Then the rate. Brokers set the price that carriers haul for. When the rate is pushed low enough, the only carriers who take the load are the ones cutting corners on maintenance, hours of service, or driver qualification. Load confirmations, rate sheets, and the broker's bidding data show whether this particular load was tendered at a rate that selects for unsafe operators. That supports the negligent-selection causation theory plaintiffs are advancing post-Montgomery; courts have not uniformly accepted rate-pressure standing alone, so the record has to tie the rate to the specific safety failure that produced the crash.
Then the pattern. A single bad pick is one case. A broker that repeatedly tenders loads to carriers with double-digit out-of-service rates has a corporate policy problem, and corporate policy is what supports punitive exposure. The broker's full carrier roster, vetting protocols, and internal safety communications are now discoverable, and they are where the real leverage sits.
One more note on the scope of who gets named. Montgomery is a direct-liability ruling: it opens negligent hiring against the broker. It is not a green light for vicarious liability that did not already exist; pre-existing agency, statutory employer, and logo-liability theories against brokers are unchanged, and where those applied before Montgomery they still do. The same logic also reaches up the chain to the shipper: a shipper that selected the carrier directly, or co-brokered the load, faces parallel negligent-selection exposure under the same safety-decision framing. The broker is the obvious new defendant, not the only one.
How Brokers Will Fight These Cases
Brokers did not lose their entire defense on May 14. They lost the door-closer. The fight now happens on the merits, and brokers will run three plays.
First, they will say they are not motor carriers and owe no duty to vet beyond confirming federal operating authority and minimum insurance. Expect the argument that a broker who pulls an active MC number, a current insurance certificate, and a not-unsatisfactory FMCSA rating has done everything the law requires. Ask the broker on the other side of your case to produce its written carrier-qualification standard and the version in effect on the date of the load. If the standard says "active authority and insurance," that is the defense, in writing, and it is thin once a jury sees the CSA Safety Measurement System scores the broker could have pulled in thirty seconds.
Second, they will fight causation. The argument runs that even a carrier with bad inspection history would have been hired by someone, so the broker's pick did not cause the crash. That collapses when the specific driver, truck, or pattern of violations that produced the wreck shows up in the safety record the broker ignored.
Third, they will hide behind volume. Large brokers move thousands of loads a day and will argue individualized vetting is impossible. The answer is short. They built the business model. The duty travels with the profit.
If a Broker-Arranged 18-Wheeler Hit You
The truck that hit you has a name on the door, but that name is often not the whole story. Behind most long-haul loads sits a freight broker, a middleman who took the shipper's call, shopped the load on a load board, and handed it to whichever trucking company would haul it for the price. Until May 14, 2026, that broker walked away from the wreckage. Now they don't.
If you or someone in your family was hit by an 18-wheeler on I-10, I-20, I-49, or any other Louisiana road, the carrier and the driver are no longer the end of the list. The broker who picked that carrier is a potential defendant if they put an unsafe trucking company on the road. Unsafe means what an ordinary person would think it means: a carrier with bad federal safety scores, prior crashes, prior out-of-service violations, expired or thin insurance, or a record the broker either ignored or never bothered to pull. Ask any lawyer you talk to how they intend to investigate the broker, what they will demand from the vetting file, how they will trace the load from shipper to broker to carrier, whether they have run a Montgomery-style negligent-selection theory before. A lawyer who only names the trucking company and the driver is leaving a defendant, and a separate insurance policy, on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What did Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II actually decide?
On May 14, 2026, a unanimous Supreme Court held 9-0 that state-law negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers survive federal preemption under the FAAAA's safety exception. A broker that picked an unsafe carrier can now be sued in state court for that selection. The ruling reversed the Seventh Circuit.
- Does this mean freight brokers are automatically liable when a truck they arranged hurts someone?
No. Montgomery is not strict liability. A plaintiff still has to prove the broker owed a duty of reasonable care in carrier selection, that the broker breached that duty by picking an unsafe carrier, that the choice caused the crash, and that the crash caused real damages. The Court opened the courthouse door. The plaintiff still walks through it under ordinary state negligence rules.
- What does the FAAAA safety exception actually cover?
The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act preempts state laws "related to" a broker's prices, routes, or services. But the statute carves out an exception at 49 U.S.C. sec. 14501(c)(2)(A) preserving state authority over motor-vehicle safety. The Supreme Court read negligent-hiring claims as safety-regulation claims, which puts them inside the carve-out.
- What kinds of records show a broker picked an unsafe carrier?
The vetting file the broker kept on the carrier, or did not keep, is the core record. That includes the carrier's CSA scores at booking, the FMCSA safety rating in the file, prior crash and violation history, out-of-service rates, insurance verification, and the broker's written carrier-qualification standard. The rate paid for the load is also discoverable, because a rock-bottom rate selects for carriers that cut corners on safety.
- Can the case be brought in Louisiana state court against a broker outside Louisiana?
Whether a broker can be sued in Louisiana depends on long-arm jurisdiction and the contacts the broker had with the state. A crash on a Louisiana interstate, freight tendered into Louisiana, and a Louisiana plaintiff are the kinds of contacts courts consider. The right answer turns on the specific facts of the load and the broker. Talk to counsel before assuming venue is or is not available.
- Does this ruling apply to crashes that happened before May 14, 2026?
The Supreme Court's reading of the FAAAA describes how the statute always worked, so claims tied to older crashes can rely on it. Prescription and limitations deadlines still control, and Louisiana's deadline depends on when the crash happened. For Louisiana crashes occurring on or after July 1, 2024, Act 423 of 2024 set the prescriptive period for personal-injury delicts at two years. For Louisiana crashes occurring before July 1, 2024, the old one-year prescriptive period applies. Texas's statute of limitations for personal injury is two years. If the clock has already run on either side of the border, Montgomery does not restart it.