Freight Brokers Can Be Sued for Hiring Unsafe Carriers
A unanimous Supreme Court just closed one of the biggest escape hatches in trucking litigation.
For years, freight brokers, the companies that arrange shipments by connecting shippers with motor carriers, used a federal preemption argument to get cases dismissed before they ever saw a jury. That defense is gone.
On May 14, 2026, all nine justices agreed: state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by federal law. Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U.S. ___ (2026). The opinion was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The vote was 9-0.
This decision matters for every person injured in a serious truck crash in Oregon and throughout the country.
What Happened in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport
Shawn Montgomery was a truck driver who had pulled his tractor-trailer onto the shoulder of an Illinois highway due to a mechanical problem. While he stood outside the vehicle, a truck operated by Yosniel Varela-Mojena veered off the road and slammed into him. Montgomery lost his leg. He suffered permanent injuries.
Varela-Mojena was driving for Caribe Transport II, LLC, a motor carrier. The freight, a load of plastic pots being hauled from Ohio to Arkansas and Texas, had been arranged by C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., one of the largest freight brokers in the country.
Montgomery sued the driver, the carrier, and the broker.
Against C.H. Robinson, he argued negligent hiring. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had given Caribe Transport a "conditional" safety rating, which is the federal agency's way of flagging carriers as deficient. The documented deficiencies included driver qualification, hours of service compliance, vehicle inspection, repair and maintenance, and recordable crash rate. Montgomery's argument was straightforward: C.H. Robinson knew, or should have known, that choosing Caribe Transport was reasonably likely to result in a crash that would injure someone.
The federal district court dismissed the claim. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Both courts held that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994, known as the FAAAA, preempted the state negligent hiring claim against the broker.
The Supreme Court reversed.
What the FAAAA Is and Why It Mattered
The FAAAA is a federal deregulation statute passed in 1994. Its main purpose was economic: Congress wanted to deregulate the trucking industry and prevent a patchwork of conflicting state regulations from interfering with interstate commerce. The statute preempts state laws "related to a price, route, or service" of motor carriers and brokers.
But the FAAAA contains a safety exception. It says the preemption provision does not restrict "the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles."
For years, courts disagreed about whether that safety exception covered negligent hiring claims against freight brokers. Some circuits said yes; others said no. The Seventh Circuit had been the most hostile to these claims, holding in Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises (2023) that the FAAAA preempted them entirely. That ruling became the freight industry's primary defense nationwide.
The Supreme Court took the case to resolve the split.
What the Court Held
Justice Barrett's reasoning was direct.
Requiring a freight broker to exercise ordinary care when selecting a motor carrier concerns motor vehicle safety. A broker who picks a carrier with a poor safety record, documented maintenance failures, and hours-of-service violations is making a decision that puts unsafe trucks on the road. When those trucks cause crashes, the broker's negligent selection is connected to motor vehicle safety in the most literal sense.
The Court held that Montgomery's negligent hiring claim falls within the FAAAA's safety exception, which preserves state authority to regulate motor vehicle safety. The claim is not preempted. Barrett wrote: "Requiring C.H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier therefore 'concerns' motor vehicles, most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods."
The decision was eight pages. Clean. Unanimous.
Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, wrote separately to say the case was a closer call than the majority suggested. Nonetheless, the Ye line of cases from the Seventh Circuit is no longer good law.
Why This Is a Major Development for Truck Accident Victims
Brokers Are Now Accountable for Who They Hire
Today, roughly 28,000 freight brokers arrange transportation for about a third of all freight shipped in the United States by more than 780,000 carriers. These are not passive middlemen. Brokers select carriers, negotiate rates, and coordinate shipments. They have access to carrier safety data through the FMCSA's Safety Measurement System, which tracks out-of-service violations, crash rates, hours-of-service compliance, driver qualification records, and maintenance histories. That data is publicly available.
Before Montgomery, a broker could look at a carrier's conditional safety rating, documented crash history, and fleet of improperly maintained trucks, dispatch that carrier anyway, and then invoke the FAAAA when someone got hurt. The claim would be gone before discovery even started.
That defense is finished.
The Standard Is Ordinary Care
The Court was careful to say this is not automatic liability. Brokers who exercise reasonable care in selecting reputable carriers can still defeat these claims. The standard is ordinary care in the vetting process.
What does that look like? At a minimum: checking publicly available FMCSA safety data before dispatching a carrier. Documenting the selection process. Refusing to use carriers flagged with conditional or unsatisfactory safety ratings, documented driver qualification failures, recurring out-of-service violations, or troubling crash histories.
In other words, the same due diligence a reasonable person would exercise before handing someone the keys to an 80,000-pound vehicle.
When a broker skips that process, cuts corners to move more loads faster, or ignores red flags to save money, state tort law can now reach them.
When the Carrier's Insurance Is Not Enough
One of the reasons this decision is so important for injury victims is financial. Catastrophic injuries can lead to millions in medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. In many large-truck crashes, the motor carrier carries only the federally required $750,000 in liability insurance. In catastrophic injury cases, this is often inadequate.
The driver in a catastrophic truck crash is often the least financially significant defendant. Motor carriers vary widely in their insurance coverage and assets. But large freight brokers, companies like C.H. Robinson, which posted billions in revenue, are substantial entities with real insurance and real resources. This decision gives injured people a meaningful path to reach that part of the chain.
What Red Flags Plaintiffs Can Now Target
The evidence that supports a negligent selection claim against a broker includes, but is not limited to:
A conditional or unsatisfactory FMCSA safety rating at the time of dispatch
Documented deficiencies in driver qualification
Hours-of-service violations in the carrier's history
Recurring out-of-service orders for vehicle maintenance failures
A crash rate above industry norms
Prior incidents that should have disqualified the carrier from continued use
Evidence that the broker failed to check available safety data before dispatch
Automated vetting systems that clear carriers without any human review of red flags
Evidence that the broker used the carrier repeatedly despite warning signs
These are exactly the kinds of facts that trucking lawyers will now be able to pursue in discovery against brokers who hide behind the "we're just the middleman" argument.
Montgomery addressed negligent hiring directly, but it did more than validate that one theory. By confirming that state tort law reaches freight brokers, the decision strengthens a broader set of claims that plaintiffs can bring depending on the facts of the case. Such claims could include, but are not limited to:
Negligent Hiring and Negligent Selection
Negligent Retention and Negligent Monitoring
Vicarious Liability
Negligent Undertaking
Logistics Provider Liability
Not every case will support all of these theories. The facts determine what claims hold up. But Montgomery removes the preemption defense that brokers used to cut off discovery before those facts could ever be explored.
What This Means for Oregon Truck Accident Cases
Oregon sits in the Ninth Circuit. Before Montgomery, the Ninth Circuit had already ruled in Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. that negligent hiring claims against freight brokers were not preempted by the FAAAA, meaning Oregon plaintiffs already had access to these claims in federal court.
That was not the rule everywhere. The Seventh Circuit, covering Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, held the opposite. The Eleventh Circuit, covering Florida and Georgia, agreed with them. In those states, broker negligent hiring claims were essentially dead on arrival. The Supreme Court took Montgomery precisely to resolve that split.
Montgomery now makes the Ninth Circuit's rule the law in every state. But for Oregon victims, the more significant practical effects are certainty. The preemption argument is gone in every court, state or federal. There is no longer any question about whether the claim survives a dismissal motion or could be reversed on appeal.
Freight moving through Portland, along I-84, I-5, Highway 30, the Coast Range, and across the Columbia River Gorge is routinely arranged by brokers. When a carrier dispatched by a broker causes a catastrophic crash in Oregon, the broker faces accountability under state negligence law with no federal escape hatch remaining.
There are three practical consequences that matter most to injured people and their families.
The first is access to more insurance coverage. Federal law requires most motor carriers to carry a minimum of $750,000 in primary liability insurance. Many carry $1,000,000. For a catastrophic injury — a traumatic brain injury, paralysis, an amputation, a wrongful death — those limits are often exhausted long before all the damages are accounted for. Freight brokers frequently carry substantially higher coverage. Adding a broker as a defendant can mean the difference between a recovery that falls short and one that actually covers what was lost.
The second is consistency across state lines. Before Montgomery, the preemption question produced different answers depending on where the crash happened. A crash in Oregon, handled in the Ninth Circuit, gave the plaintiff a viable broker claim. The same crash, same broker, same facts, in Illinois would have seen the broker claim dismissed before discovery. That disparity is gone. The same legal framework now applies in Portland, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and everywhere in between.
The third is a long-term safety benefit. When brokers face real financial exposure for dispatching carriers with poor safety records, they have a direct economic reason to vet more carefully. Over time, that pressure should push unsafe carriers out of the market. The Supreme Court noted as much: the negligent hiring tort exists to keep unsafe trucks and unsafe drivers off America's highways. That is true on Oregon highways, too.
The Broader Context: Trucking Litigation Is Already Complex
Truck crash cases are not like car accident cases. As we discuss on our Portland Truck Accident page, these cases routinely involve multiple liable parties: the driver, the motor carrier, cargo loaders, maintenance providers, and now, squarely, brokers.
Evidence in these cases disappears fast. Electronic logging device data. ECM data. Hours-of-service records. Maintenance logs. Broker vetting records and carrier selection documentation. These need to be preserved immediately after a crash through a proper legal hold.
The decision in Montgomery broadens the pool of potentially liable parties but does not simplify the case. It adds another defendant with its own lawyers and its own insurance, which means cases are likely to become more contested, not less.
Victims need counsel who knows what broker vetting records look like, how to read FMCSA safety data, and how to connect a broker's negligent selection decision to the crash that injured a real person.
Why Choose Grandy Injury Law After a Trucking Crash
At Grandy Injury Law, we represent people injured in serious trucking crashes throughout Oregon, including Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, and surrounding communities. We understand the federal regulatory framework, the layers of potentially liable parties, and the evidence that needs to be secured quickly.
Our office handles these cases on a contingency fee basis, which means there is no attorney fee unless we win your case. We also speak Spanish and serve Spanish-speaking clients throughout the Portland metro area.
If you or a family member has been seriously injured in a truck crash in Oregon, contact us for a free, confidential consultation.
Last Updated: 6/19/2026
