Broker liability after Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II: a working reference for freight brokers

A canonical guide to the Supreme Court's May 2026 decision and what it means for carrier vetting.

Last updated: May 23, 2026 · Reading time: 22 minutes

At a glance

1. On May 14, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that freight brokers can be sued under state law for negligent hiring of motor carriers. The federal statute brokers had used to block these claims for years (the FAAAA) does not preempt them.

2. The decision resolves a long-standing circuit split. Brokers in jurisdictions covered by the Sixth and Ninth Circuits were already exposed to these claims. After Montgomery, brokers everywhere are.

3. The legal standard is ordinary care in selecting carriers. Justice Barrett's unanimous opinion does not impose a new federal regulatory requirement on brokers. It permits state common-law tort claims to proceed against brokers who hire unsafe carriers.

4. The Kavanaugh concurrence (joined by Alito) is the defense playbook: brokers who act reasonably and document their vetting of reputable carriers should still defeat these cases.

5. The operational implication is documentation, not just decisions. Brokers were already vetting carriers. After Montgomery, the record of that vetting becomes a litigation artifact.

6. Plaintiffs' bars are mobilizing. Expect a surge of state-court negligent-hiring filings against brokers in the next 12 months as the bar tests the new landscape.

The case

Shawn Montgomery is a truck driver. In 2017, he stopped on the side of a highway in Illinois. A tractor-trailer hauling a load of plastic pots veered off course and struck his truck. Montgomery's leg had to be amputated.

The driver of the offending truck was Yosniel Varela-Mojena. He was dispatched by Caribe Transport II, LLC, a motor carrier that, at the time, held a "conditional" safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had previously cited Caribe Transport for deficiencies across driver qualification, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and recordable crash rate. The load that day 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 alleged a single, simple theory: the broker knew or should have known from Caribe Transport's safety record that hiring it to transport goods was reasonably likely to result in a crash that injured others. That is the classical formulation of a negligent hiring claim under state common law.

The federal district court for the Southern District of Illinois dismissed the negligent-hiring claim on the pleadings. Applying then-controlling Seventh Circuit precedent in Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises, Inc., 74 F. 4th 453 (7th Cir. 2023), the court held that the FAAAA expressly preempted the claim and that the FAAAA's safety exception did not save it. The Seventh Circuit affirmed in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 124 F. 4th 1053 (7th Cir. 2025).

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split that had been festering since at least 2020. Oral argument was held March 4, 2026. The Court decided the case on May 14, 2026.

What the Supreme Court held

The Court unanimously reversed the Seventh Circuit. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion for the Court. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, filed a concurring opinion.

The holding, in the Court's own language:

A claim that one company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted by the FAAAA because States retain authority to regulate safety "with respect to motor vehicles" under the Act.

The reasoning runs as follows. The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 broadly preempts state laws "related to a price, route, or service" of any motor carrier or broker. 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1). But the same statute contains a safety exception: the preemption provision "shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles." § 14501(c)(2)(A).

The question was whether a state common-law negligent hiring claim against a broker counts as the exercise of state safety authority "with respect to motor vehicles." The Court answered yes. The phrase "with respect to" carries its ordinary dictionary meaning of "concerns" or "regards." A negligent-hiring claim against a broker who selected an unsafe carrier "concerns" the trucks that will move the goods. The claim falls within the safety exception. The FAAAA does not preempt it.

The decision is narrow on its face. The Court did not create a federal duty for brokers to vet carriers. It did not import any specific industry standard into federal law. It did not address what a broker must do to satisfy the negligent-hiring duty. All of those questions are left to state common law — which means they vary state to state and will be litigated case by case.

But the effect is sweeping. State negligent-hiring law against brokers had been a dead letter in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits, and an unsettled question in most others. Montgomery resurrects it everywhere.

The Kavanaugh concurrence is the defense playbook

The most operationally useful section of the decision is not Justice Barrett's majority opinion. It is Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence, joined by Justice Alito.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to do two things: acknowledge that the case was closer than the majority opinion suggested, and lay out a framework for how brokers can defend themselves in the new regime.

The key passage, quoted in full:

The Court's decision today should not be read to mean that brokers will routinely be subject to state tort liability in the wake of truck accidents. As even plaintiff's counsel stressed, brokers should be able to successfully defend against state tort suits if the brokers have acted reasonably and arranged transportation with reputable trucking companies. In plaintiff's counsel's words, the brokers "just have to hire carriers that actually have a reasonable policy," and "the broker is not going to have a problem if it's asking the hard questions of the carrier." In addition, the proximate-cause requirement in typical state tort law should help protect brokers from excessive liability.

Three things make this paragraph important for working brokers.

First, it is the closest thing the Supreme Court has offered to an articulation of the defense standard. Acted reasonably. Arranged transportation with reputable trucking companies. Asked the hard questions. That is the test a broker should expect to be measured against in a post-Montgomery negligent-hiring case.

Second, it cites plaintiff's own counsel for those propositions. That citation is not accidental. Justice Kavanaugh is locking in concessions the plaintiff's side made at oral argument. A trial court in a future negligent-hiring case can be pointed to this passage and the underlying oral argument transcript when assessing whether the broker exercised reasonable care.

Third, it places weight on proximate causation as a structural protection for brokers. Even if a broker's vetting was imperfect, the plaintiff still must prove that the vetting failure caused the accident. That is a meaningful evidentiary burden in many cases.

The Kavanaugh concurrence is not binding. But it is highly cited material that defense counsel will rely on in every post-Montgomery case, and a broker building a vetting program is well-advised to design that program with these three pillars in mind.

Why this matters: the legal framework

A working broker does not need a law-school understanding of preemption doctrine. But two pieces of background help the rest of this guide make sense.

What negligent hiring requires

Negligent hiring is a state common-law tort, recognized in some form in every state. Its core formulation, drawn from the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 (1964), is this: a party who hires an independent contractor for work involving a risk of physical harm has a duty to exercise reasonable care in the selection of that contractor.

In the trucking context, a broker is selecting a carrier for work that obviously involves a risk of physical harm (large vehicles moving freight at highway speeds). The duty applies. The question in any particular case is whether the broker exercised reasonable care in that selection.

Reasonable care is fact-specific. It depends on what information was reasonably available, what red flags should have been seen, and what a similarly situated broker in the same circumstances would have done. There is no statutory checklist. Courts will look at industry practice, the broker's own internal procedures, and what publicly available data the broker did or did not consult.

What the FAAAA did, and why brokers thought they were protected

The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 was an economic deregulation statute. Its goal was to extend the same federal preemption of state economic regulation that already applied to airlines to the trucking industry. The relevant preemption provision (49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1)) prohibits states from enforcing any "law, regulation, or other provision having the force and effect of law related to a price, route, or service" of a motor carrier or broker.

For years, brokers argued — and courts in several circuits agreed — that a state negligent-hiring claim against a broker is "related to" the broker's service of selecting a carrier, and is therefore preempted.

The FAAAA contains an exception. The preemption provision does not restrict the "safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles." § 14501(c)(2)(A). The fight, for nearly a decade, was whether this safety exception saved negligent-hiring claims against brokers from preemption. Montgomery answers yes. The fight is over.

The circuit split this resolves

Before Montgomery, the federal circuits were divided three ways on whether the FAAAA preempted negligent-hiring claims against brokers.

Brokers headquartered in Chicago, Atlanta, and other cities in the formerly broker-friendly circuits have lost their preemption defense overnight. Brokers in California and the Sixth Circuit states have not gained or lost any meaningful protection — they were already operating under a no-preemption regime.

The practical effect: forum shopping is over. Before Montgomery, plaintiffs' counsel sometimes structured cases to get into a circuit that allowed negligent-hiring claims to proceed. After Montgomery, the venue does not matter — the claim can proceed anywhere.

What this means for brokers operationally

Translating the decision into Monday-morning operational changes is where most legal commentary stops short. Three layers matter.

Layer 1: Vetting is now a documented process, not just a decision

Before Montgomery, many brokers vetted carriers but kept little durable record of that vetting. The decision to onboard a carrier might have lived in an email chain, a CRM note, or no place at all.

After Montgomery, a broker's vetting record is a litigation artifact. Plaintiffs' counsel will request it in discovery in every personal-injury case involving a carrier the broker tendered to. The absence of a vetting record is not a defense.

The change is in what gets preserved, not necessarily what gets done. Brokers who already pull authority status, insurance verification, safety ratings, and inspection history before onboarding a carrier are mostly in the right place operationally. What they need to add is a timestamped, durable record of what was checked, what was found, and what decision was made.

Layer 2: The standard is reasonable care, not perfection

A broker is not required to detect every possible warning sign about every possible carrier. The standard is what a reasonably careful broker in the same circumstances would have done.

That is good news and bad news. Good news: missing a single inspection violation buried 18 months back in a carrier's record is not, by itself, a basis for liability. Bad news: ignoring information that was obviously available — a conditional safety rating like Caribe Transport's, an active out-of-service order, a recent crash spike — almost certainly is.

The plaintiff's bar will argue that information available on FMCSA's public-facing systems (SAFER, the SAFER Web Carrier Snapshot, the Company Snapshot, the Pre-Employment Screening Program) is information a reasonably careful broker should have consulted. Brokers who do not consult publicly available safety data, or who consult it but do not document doing so, are at meaningful risk.

Layer 3: Combination signals matter more than single events

The harder cases are not where a broker tendered to a carrier with an active out-of-service order. Those cases will resolve quickly against the broker. The harder cases — and the ones that will produce most of the litigation — involve carriers where individual signals looked acceptable but the pattern, viewed together, indicated risk.

A carrier with a clean public-facing record can still exhibit warning signs visible only in combination: a recent change of contact information without a corresponding change of officer; a new insurance carrier in the same window; a fleet whose VINs appear on equipment-for-sale listings; a sudden expansion of stated operating authority without commensurate fleet growth. These are the signatures of carriers being sold or repurposed in ways that the FMCSA carrier graph does not flag.

A broker who relies only on the SAFER snapshot may comply with the floor of "ordinary care" today. The litigation realities of the next 24 months will determine how much higher the floor moves.

The vetting documentation standard

What does a defensible vetting record look like? There is no statutory checklist. The following items reflect what defense counsel, industry trade groups (TIA), and post-Montgomery commentary have converged on as the practical baseline.

At minimum, document the following before tendering a first load:

• Operating authority status (Active, with the date checked)

• Insurance verification, including BIPD policy in force and effective dates

• USDOT safety rating (Satisfactory, Conditional, Unsatisfactory, or None) and the date of the most recent rating

• SMS / BASIC scores at the date of vetting (or a note that the data was reviewed)

• Whether the carrier appears on the FMCSA out-of-service list

• Inspection and crash history reviewed (with the look-back period documented)

• The name of the person at the broker who performed the vetting

• The date and time the vetting was completed

• The decision made (approved, denied, conditional approval pending additional documentation)

For ongoing vetting (carriers that have been onboarded but are being given new loads), document:

• Re-verification of insurance and authority status at a defined cadence (commonly every 30 days, or before each load if the broker's volume permits)

• Any new safety incidents since the last review (crashes, inspections, out-of-service events)

• Any material change in the carrier's operating profile (new officers, new addresses, new equipment, new authority filings)

• Continued absence from the FMCSA out-of-service list

For carriers that fail the vetting:

• A timestamped record of the failure, the reason, and the decision not to tender

• The communication, if any, with the carrier explaining the decision

• Retention of the failed vetting record alongside the records of successful vettings (not deletion)

This last point is non-obvious but important. Discovery in negligent-hiring cases will examine not only the carrier that caused the injury but also the broker's vetting patterns generally. A broker who can demonstrate that it routinely declines high-risk carriers — with documentation of those declines — is in a stronger position than a broker who can only document the carriers it approved.

What does "ordinary care" look like in practice?

A working benchmark, drawn from defense counsel guidance after Montgomery, is whether a reasonable broker in the same circumstances would have looked at the same data and made the same decision. That standard implies three operational principles:

1. Consult publicly available safety data. SAFER, SMS, the FMCSA Company Snapshot, and Pre-Employment Screening Program records are public. A broker who does not consult them is operating below the floor.

2. Look at the data that exists, not the data you wish existed. A broker is not required to perform investigations beyond what is reasonably available to a broker of similar size. But ignoring data that was obviously available is the gap that plaintiffs will exploit.

3. Document the consultation, not just the decision. A vetting decision that was the right call but is not recorded is, in litigation, indistinguishable from no vetting at all.

Residual liability and what hasn't changed

A guide that overstates the change does brokers a disservice. Several things have not changed.

Brokers are not insurers of carrier conduct. Negligent hiring requires a failure of reasonable care. A broker who exercises reasonable care, documents that care, and tenders to a reasonable carrier is not strictly liable for what the carrier's driver does on the road. The Kavanaugh concurrence is explicit on this point.

The FAAAA still preempts other claims. Montgomery is narrow. It addresses negligent-hiring claims that fall within the safety exception. State law claims against brokers based on the broker's pricing, routing, or service that do not concern motor vehicles remain preempted. This matters for non-injury claims that plaintiffs' counsel may try to creatively recharacterize as safety claims.

Carmack remains the exclusive remedy for cargo damage. The Carmack Amendment, 49 U.S.C. § 14706, governs cargo-loss claims against motor carriers and is largely unaffected by Montgomery. Carmack is a separate body of law from the negligent-hiring tort and does not generally extend liability to brokers in the same way.

Insurance coverage is not automatic. Most broker contingent cargo and broker errors-and-omissions policies were written before Montgomery in a market that did not price negligent-hiring exposure. Brokers should expect their carriers to revisit policy language and pricing at renewal. Some policies may have exclusions that did not previously matter but now do. Read renewals carefully.

Contract terms with carriers matter more, not less. Indemnification provisions in broker-carrier agreements were always commercially important. After Montgomery, they are also a critical layer of risk transfer. Brokers without strong indemnification language, additional-insured status on the carrier's auto liability policy, and clear allocation of safety-related obligations are exposed in ways that better-papered brokers are not.

What hasn't been answered yet

Several questions are now live in state and lower federal courts.

What does ordinary care actually require? The Supreme Court did not answer this. State trial courts will answer it case by case over the next several years. Watch for early decisions out of Illinois (where Montgomery itself was litigated), Texas, Florida, and California, where the volume of negligent-hiring cases is likely to be highest.

Does a broker's reliance on the FMCSA Safety Measurement System satisfy ordinary care? Defense counsel will argue yes. Plaintiffs' counsel will argue that SMS is well-known to be incomplete, that combination signals beyond SMS are visible to brokers who look for them, and that reliance on SMS alone is below the standard.

What look-back period applies? Plaintiffs' counsel will likely argue for long look-back periods (multiple years) in safety history. Defense will argue that recent data is more probative. Expect this to be litigated.

How does ordinary care interact with a carrier's safety rating? A "Satisfactory" rating from FMCSA should provide meaningful defense protection. A "Conditional" rating, like Caribe Transport's, is now widely understood as a red flag that requires additional documentation if the broker tenders anyway. Carriers with "Unsatisfactory" ratings should not be tendered to without exceptional documentation, and possibly not at all.

Does this apply retroactively? Generally yes — Montgomery interprets a statute, and statutory interpretation decisions apply to pending cases. Brokers with open negligent-hiring claims that were dismissed on preemption grounds may see those claims revived if they are still within the procedural window.

State legislative response? Trucking and broker trade associations are likely to lobby for federal legislation that would re-preempt these claims (the Kavanaugh concurrence explicitly invites this). State legislatures may also act, in either direction. The legal landscape will continue to shift.

Practical checklist

A condensed reference for operating brokers.

Before tendering a load to any carrier

• Verify operating authority status (FMCSA Active)

• Verify insurance: BIPD policy in force with valid effective dates

• Pull current FMCSA safety rating (Satisfactory / Conditional / Unsatisfactory / None)

• Pull SMS / BASIC scores

• Check FMCSA out-of-service list

• Review inspection history (12-month look-back minimum)

• Review crash history (24-month look-back minimum)

• Note any conditional rating or open enforcement action and document additional review

• Document the date, time, person performing the review, and decision

Ongoing for active carriers

• Re-verify authority and insurance on a defined cadence (every 30 days at a minimum)

• Subscribe to FMCSA change-notification feeds for material carrier events

• Track changes in carrier officer information, addresses, contact information

• Monitor for inspection events and crash events between tenders

• Document each periodic re-verification

When red flags are present

• Document the red flag (the data and the date)

• Document the additional review performed

• Document the decision rationale (decline to tender, conditional tender, full approval)

• Preserve the record alongside approvals

Records retention

• Retain vetting records for at least the longest applicable statute of limitations in your operating jurisdictions (commonly 2-6 years for negligence claims; consult counsel)

• Retain records of carriers you declined, not just carriers you approved

• Ensure records are immutable and timestamped (audit-trail format, not editable spreadsheets)

Insurance and contract review

• Review broker contingent cargo and errors-and-omissions policies with your broker

• Confirm broker-carrier agreements include strong indemnification and additional-insured provisions

• Update master agreements to reflect post-Montgomery risk allocation

How AlphaLoops fits

This guide is published by AlphaLoops, a carrier intelligence platform used by freight brokers, fleet operators, insurers, and transportation technology companies. We built a free reference guide rather than a sales page because brokers operating under the new regime need accurate information first.

What AlphaLoops does:

• Pulls authoritative FMCSA carrier data (authority, insurance, safety ratings, inspections, crashes, violations) in real time

• Maintains a proprietary risk scoring layer that surfaces combination signals beyond what FMCSA's public-facing systems show, including authority-for-sale listings, equipment-marketplace matching, connected-carrier networks, news and legal-filing signals, and historical event patterns

• Produces an audit-grade vetting record for every carrier lookup, suitable for retention as a litigation artifact

• Integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, and n8n for automated vetting workflows

• Offers a $199/month self-serve broker vetting product (7-day free trial, no credit card required for first carrier lookup) for single-seat brokerages

What AlphaLoops does not do:

• We are not legal counsel. This guide is informational, not legal advice. Brokers should consult their attorneys on how Montgomery applies to their specific operations.

• We do not issue safety ratings or compete with FMCSA's regulatory function.

• We do not guarantee that any specific carrier is safe to tender to. The decision is the broker's; we provide the data and the scoring.

If you operate a brokerage and want to see what an AlphaLoops vetting record looks like for a carrier you already work with, start a free trial.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

• Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U.S. ___, No. 24-1238 (May 14, 2026). Slip opinion (PDF) · LII text

• Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 124 F. 4th 1053 (7th Cir. 2025) (decision below)

• Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises, Inc., 74 F. 4th 453 (7th Cir. 2023)

• Aspen American Insurance Co. v. Landstar Ranger, 65 F. 4th 1261 (11th Cir. 2023)

• Cox v. Total Quality Logistics, Inc., 142 F. 4th 847 (6th Cir. 2025)

• Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., 976 F.3d 1016 (9th Cir. 2020)

• Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1) (preemption provision) and § 14501(c)(2)(A) (safety exception)

• 49 U.S.C. § 14706 (Carmack Amendment)

• 49 U.S.C. § 13102(16) (definition of "motor vehicle")

• Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 (1964) (negligent selection of contractors)

Secondary commentary cited or consulted

• Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, Supreme Court Decides Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC (May 14, 2026)

• Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, Broker Liability After Montgomery (May 14, 2026)

• Saxton & Stump, The Supreme Court Just Opened the Door on Broker Liability (May 2026)

• Cottingham & Butler, The Supreme Court's Montgomery Decision: What Brokers, Carriers, and Shippers Should Know

• Logistics Management, Supreme Court Decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II LLC Could Reshape Broker Liability Across Trucking Industry

Trade and regulatory sources

• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: Safety Measurement System (SMS), SAFER, Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP), Company Snapshot

• Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) guidance, post-Montgomery (2026)

• U.S. Department of Transportation, Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2022 (2025)

About this guide

This guide is maintained by AlphaLoops as a public reference for the freight industry. It is not legal advice. Brokers should consult their attorneys on the application of Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II to their specific operations and jurisdictions.

The Montgomery decision is recent. State court interpretations and any federal legislative response will change the practical implications over time. We update this guide as the law evolves. The version above is current as of May 23, 2026.

Corrections, suggestions, or substantive disagreements: hello@runalphaloop.com.