Montgomery v. Caribe Transport: What the Supreme Court Ruling Means for Freight Brokers

For years, freight brokers facing a negligent-hiring lawsuit after a crash had a strong first move: argue that federal law preempts the claim. On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court closed that door in a unanimous decision.

The short version: a claim that a broker negligently selected a carrier can proceed under state law. That doesn't make a broker liable for every crash. It does mean a judge or jury may now ask what you did before you tendered the load.

We build carrier verification software. We aren't a law firm and this isn't legal advice. Talk to your own counsel about how this applies to you.

What happened in the case

Shawn Montgomery's tractor-trailer was stopped on the side of an Illinois road when another truck veered off course and struck it. That truck was hauling a load for a motor carrier, Caribe Transport II, and C.H. Robinson had arranged the shipment as the broker.

Montgomery sued the broker, alleging it negligently hired Caribe despite a conditional safety rating. The broker's defense was preemption under the FAAAA, the 1994 federal law that bars states from regulating prices, routes and services of brokers.

What the Court held

The FAAAA has a safety exception, which preserves state authority "with respect to motor vehicles." The question was whether a negligent-selection claim fits inside it.

Justice Barrett's opinion says it does: "A claim that one company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted by the FAAAA." Requiring a broker "to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier," the Court wrote, concerns motor vehicles, "most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods."

You can read the full opinion on Cornell's Legal Information Institute.

What the concurrence adds

The part most worth a broker's time may be the concurrence. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, called the case "closer than the Court's opinion perhaps might suggest" and set out several limits:

• The decision "should not be read to mean that brokers will routinely be subject to state tort liability."
• Federal law "does not require brokers to take substantial steps" to ensure they select safe carriers, beyond requiring a federally registered carrier.
• Brokers may defend these suits if they "have acted reasonably and arranged transportation with reputable trucking companies."

That last line points to where the fight now moves: away from preemption and onto the facts of what the broker did.

What the decision did not settle

Here's what remains open, based on the opinion and on transportation law firm Benesch's analysis:

• What reasonable care requires. The Court didn't define it. Asked directly, Benesch wrote: "The honest answer is that no one knows."
• Which factors count. Safety ratings, months in operation and federal safety data are all still debated.
• State differences. Results will vary by jurisdiction, and possibly within one.
• Vicarious liability. That theory wasn't before the Court.
• Cargo claims. Courts have distinguished cargo security from safety. It remains a developing area.

Anyone selling you a guaranteed way to satisfy "reasonable care" is ahead of the law.

What brokers should do now

Benesch's recommendations are practical, and most of them cost little:

1. Write down your carrier selection policy. "Every broker should have a written policy or protocol in place."
2. Start with the baseline. Federally licensed carriers with active operating authority.
3. Call your liability insurer. Ask what onboarding criteria they expect. Benesch notes some underwriters may require a particular policy, and others may offer premium relief for certain practices.
4. Train the people who onboard and monitor carriers.
5. Actually follow the policy. "The only practice worse than not having a policy in place is having a policy and routinely violating that policy."

That fifth point is the hard one. A policy written on a calm Tuesday tends to get skipped on a busy Friday, when a load needs to move and a rep has someone on the phone who sounds fine. In a lawsuit, the gap between your written policy and what your team actually did is the first thing to come out.

What to keep in the file

Think about what you would want to show in two years, about a load nobody remembers. At a minimum, you want to be able to answer:

• What did you check, and when?
• What did the federal record show at that moment?
• Who did you actually talk to?
• What insurance evidence did you have, and where did it come from?
• Who was driving, and in what truck?
• Did anything change after approval, and did you notice?

We go through this in more detail in what to document when you select a carrier.

Where software fits, and where it doesn't

No software can guarantee you won't be sued, or win the case for you. What it can do is remove the two weakest points in a manual process: steps that get skipped and evidence that never got saved.

That's why Happy Tactic's verification is enforced by the server rather than left to a checklist: a rep can't jump past the owner call or the insurance step. Each decision ships with an Evidence Packet listing every finding. And because the TMS is in the same system, an expired or failed carrier can't take a tender. There's more on this on our negligent selection page.

The bottom line

Montgomery didn't create a new duty so much as remove an old shield. Good brokers were already vetting carriers. The difference now is that the record of how you did it may matter as much as the fact that you did.