Freight Broker Liability After a Truck Crash

Freight broker liability moved to the center of truck crash litigation in May 2026, when the United States Supreme Court held unanimously that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act does not shield brokers from state-law negligent hiring claims. The decision, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, resolved a question that had divided the courts of appeals and opened a wider path for injured people to reach the companies that put unsafe carriers on the road.

What is a Freight Broker?

A freight broker serves as an authorized intermediary matching businesses that need cargo transported with licensed carriers possessing available truck capacity. In the United States, brokers operate under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) authority (49 CFR § 371.2), arranging transportation for compensation without ever owning the trucks or taking physical possession of the cargo

Unanimous Ruling on Broker Accountability

On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, a case that asked whether a company that hires another company to transport goods can be sued under state law when the carrier it selects causes harm. The Court answered yes, reversing and remanding the lower court’s judgment in a 9 to 0 opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

The holding was narrow but significant. A case that one company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, because states retain authority to regulate safety with respect to motor vehicles under the act. That means brokers cannot use FAAAA preemption to end a negligent hiring case at the outset.

Path to the Supreme Court

The dispute grew out of Shawn Montgomery’s injuries after a truck struck his tractor-trailer while it was stopped on the side of an Illinois road. Montgomery’s leg had to be amputated. He alleged that freight broker C.H. Robinson knew or should have known from Caribe Transport’s safety rating that hiring it was reasonably likely to result in crashes that would injure others. The Supreme Court reviewed whether the FAAAA barred that negligent-hiring case.

The question was whether a state-law negligent hiring claim against a freight broker is preempted by the FAAAA. The Court held that it is not, relying on the act’s safety exception for state authority over motor vehicles. The ruling reversed the judgment below and sent the case back for further proceedings.

FAAAA Preemption Question

The case is about a single federal statute. The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 added a preemption provision to federal transportation law that bars states, subject to listed exceptions, from enacting laws related to a motor carrier’s prices, routes, or services. The provision is codified at 49 U.S.C. 14501(c).

Freight brokers argued that the FAAAA preempted state negligent-hiring cases concerning their carrier-selection services. In Montgomery, the Court assumed without deciding that the preemption clause otherwise applied, then held that the motor-vehicle safety exception preserved Montgomery’s case. The exception appears in 49 U.S.C. 14501(c)(2)(A) and preserves state safety regulatory authority with respect to motor vehicles.

Safety Exception for Motor Vehicles

The safety exception was the hinge of the entire case. The Court reasoned that the negligent hiring of an unsafe motor carrier whose truck caused injury is an exercise of a State’s safety regulatory authority with respect to motor vehicles, not a backdoor regulation of prices, routes, or services. Because the exception preserves that state authority, the case survives preemption and can proceed in state court.

The brokers also pointed to a different part of the statute. Subsection (b) preempts state regulation of intrastate rates, routes, or services of a freight forwarder or broker, and unlike subsection (c) it has no safety exception. The Court granted that it is not obvious why Congress wrote an exception into one subsection and not the other, and held that the text of subsection (c)(2)(A) controls. It did not reach the question of Congress’s authority to enact subsection (b), which was not before it. Montgomery therefore interprets the safety exception in subsection (c); it does not decide how subsection (b) applies to a load that moves only within one state.

That framing changes the picture for injury victims. A broker cannot wave the FAAAA as a federal shield to escape a case that it knowingly handed a load to an unsafe carrier. The question becomes whether the broker used a proper carrier-selection process, a question state courts and juries are equipped to answer.

Freight Broker Liability After Montgomery

Freight broker liability, as a practical matter, is about the duty to select a competent and safe carrier. A broker arranges transportation between a shipper and a motor carrier but does not operate the truck. Before Montgomery, brokers argued that this hands-off role insulated them from cases when the carrier they chose caused a crash. The unanimous ruling rejects the FAAAA preemption defense for this type of motor-vehicle safety case. It does not decide whether the broker was negligent or establish causation, damages, or available insurance coverage.

The holding follows the structure of brokered freight, where a single load can pass from a shipper to a broker to a carrier and finally to a driver, and the company that arranged the haul is often the most visible and solvent link in that chain. When a fatigued or unqualified driver operating for a marginally insured carrier causes a crash, the people hurt in that crash gain a clearer route to the entity that put that carrier on the road.

Ripple Effects Across the Supply Chain

Legal analysts have been tracking the fallout in real time. Since the Supreme Court’s May 14 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the immediate focus has been on freight brokers and negligent carrier-selection cases, but the ripple effects may extend to shippers, logistics providers, insurers, transportation managers, and other participants in the supply chain.

That breadth is why the ruling reaches far beyond a single case. One analysis examined how the Montgomery ruling is expected to affect companies across the supply chain, and another cautioned that the decision does not automatically expand shipper liability. For injury victims, the universe of potentially accountable parties is larger and more contested than it was a year ago.

Kentucky Freight Corridors

Kentucky sits at the crossroads of eastern freight movement, where Interstates 65, 75, 64, and 71 carry a steady stream of commercial traffic between the Midwest, the South, and the East Coast. When a crash happens on a Kentucky corridor, the truck may be registered out of state, the carrier may be based hundreds of miles away, and the broker that arranged the haul may be a fourth party nowhere near the scene.

The carrier’s safety rating, operating authority, and insurance status are all publicly available through the FMCSA SAFER database, which makes a broker’s failure to check them before tendering a load difficult to explain away after a collision.

For people injured in those crashes, the practical problem has always been identifying a responsible, solvent defendant. The driver may carry minimal coverage. The carrier may be a small operation with thin assets. The broker, by contrast, is frequently a larger, better-capitalized company that made a deliberate decision to hire the carrier that caused the harm. Montgomery confirms that this decision can be scrutinized in court. Kentucky injury victims dealing with truck accident liability in Kentucky now have a stronger basis to include the broker in that analysis.

Evidence That Drives a Broker Liability Case

A negligent selection case rises or falls on the carrier-selection record. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration maintains public databases that injury attorneys use to reconstruct what a broker knew, or should have known, about the carrier it hired. The FMCSA SAFER database provides company snapshots, safety ratings, operating authority, and insurance information. The agency’s Safety Measurement System data tracks Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories, or BASICs, scores that flag problem carriers.

In a broker-liability case, the relevant questions often include whether the broker checked the carrier’s operating authority and safety rating before tendering the load, whether the carrier had a conditional or unsatisfactory rating, whether the broker reviewed the carrier’s hours-of-service compliance history, and whether the carrier had prior out-of-service violations. That evidence is gathered through the crash investigation and black box analysis in Kentucky truck cases, which can surface broker emails, load confirmations, carrier vetting checklists, and internal communications about the carrier’s safety record.

The tools to separate a vetted carrier from an unvetted one are public, which makes a broker’s failure to use them harder to defend after a crash.

Truck Safety Backdrop

The Montgomery ruling lands against a backdrop of persistent truck crash fatalities: 5,340 people died in large truck crashes in 2024, within the 39,254 traffic deaths on U.S. roads that year. Each of those large-truck fatalities represents a potential chain of accountability that now reaches one link further upstream to the broker.

Regulators continue to tighten the screws on the carriers themselves. On July 9, 2026, FMCSA removed 10 electronic logging devices from its registered list for failing to meet minimum requirements and gave carriers up to 60 days to replace them; since September 8, 2026, drivers using those devices can be placed out of service. The agency also published three deregulatory final rules on June 22, 2026, effective July 22, 2026, covering CDL self-reporting, ELD operator manuals, and inspection report disposition. Those rule changes did not alter hours-of-service limits, drug and alcohol testing, or CDL qualification standards, but they reflect an agency actively reshaping the compliance rules brokers must manage when vetting carriers.

Together, these developments mean the safety record a broker should have reviewed is more visible and more current than ever. That strengthens negligent selection cases and raises the stakes for brokers that skip the vetting step. It also connects directly to the tactics carriers and their insurers use after a crash, covered in the overview of truck accident injury cases in Kentucky.