Supreme Court Allows Broker Negligent-Hiring Lawsuits to Proceed — What Montgomery v. Caribe Means for Carrier Vetting

On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a unanimous opinion that changes how freight brokers think about risk. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the Court held that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (the FAAAA) does not preempt state-law negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers when a carrier the broker selected is later involved in a serious crash. In plain English: brokers could already be sued, but they often escaped these cases early by arguing the FAAAA blocked them. That escape route is now closed — a negligent-hiring claim against a broker can proceed in state court and must be defended on the merits.

This is the rare federal preemption case where the practical impact is easy to state. For years, brokers facing accident lawsuits routinely won early motions to dismiss by arguing that the FAAAA, which preempts state laws “related to a price, route, or service” of a broker or carrier, swept negligent-hiring claims off the table. The Court rejected that argument. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Barrett explained that requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in choosing which trucking company will haul a load “concerns” motor vehicles — most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods — and therefore falls inside the FAAAA’s safety exception, which preserves the States’ traditional authority to regulate motor vehicle safety. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, wrote a concurrence cautioning that the decision should not be read to mean brokers will routinely be liable, and that proximate-cause doctrine in state tort law will still protect brokers who acted reasonably.

What changed on May 14, 2026

Before the ruling, the federal circuits were split. Some Courts of Appeals held that negligent-hiring claims against brokers were preempted by the FAAAA. Others held that the safety exception saved those claims. Montgomery v. Caribe resolves the split nationally. Brokers can no longer use the FAAAA as a quick exit from negligent-hiring lawsuits in any state. The claims go forward, and the broker has to defend the carrier-selection decision on the merits.

What this means in practice for brokers

Three things change immediately for any broker doing interstate business in the United States.

First, the carrier-vetting file is now key evidence of reasonable carrier-selection practices, not just a compliance artifact. Whatever you did at the moment you selected a carrier — SAFER checks, CSA percentile review, insurance verification, operating authority confirmation, identity verification — is what a court will look at to decide whether you exercised ordinary care. If you did not document it at the time, it is very hard to reconstruct later.

Second, the absence of a written vetting standard is now a liability of its own. A broker who can hand a plaintiff’s attorney a clear, dated, written vetting policy — and proof that the policy was followed for the carrier in question — is in a meaningfully different position than a broker who cannot.

Third, the cost of using marginal carriers has gone up. The Court left open how juries should weigh red flags like a recent unsatisfactory safety rating, a pattern of insurance lapses, or a SAFER profile that does not match the entity actually moving the freight. Carriers who present red flags on the day of selection are riskier to use today than they were on May 13, 2026.

What to do this week

Brokers should treat the next 30 days as the right time to write down, in one document, exactly how the company vets carriers before issuing a load tender; to confirm the company is preserving SAFER snapshots, insurance certificates, and identity checks at the moment of selection, not after the fact; and to train dispatchers and operations staff on the new standard. If your carrier-vetting process today is informal or relies on individual judgment, the Montgomery decision is the reason to formalize it.

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