The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U.S. ___ (2026) settled the broker question. State-law negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. I’ve written about that ruling and what it means for accident victims — you can read that analysis on our blog.
But there’s a harder question nobody is talking about yet: when does shipper liability for a trucking accident begin?
Brokers don’t select themselves. Shippers hire them. And the doctrinal logic that just made brokers answerable for the carriers they pick doesn’t stop at the broker’s front door.
The Supreme Court in Montgomery addressed only one link in the supply chain. It held that requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in carrier selection “concerns” motor vehicles — the trucks that get on the road and cause crashes when that selection is careless. The safety exception at 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(2)(A) preserves exactly that kind of state-law duty.
What the Court did not address is what happens when the shipper chose the broker carelessly.
Attorneys at Hanson Bridgett flagged this in their post-ruling analysis: plaintiffs have already been testing negligent-selection theories against shippers — on the theory that the shipper selected the broker. As they noted, Montgomery’s doctrinal logic “does not stop at the broker.” The same reasoning that holds a broker accountable for booking a carrier with a conditional FMCSA safety rating can, in the right case, hold a shipper accountable for hiring a broker who never looked at safety ratings at all.
That’s not a stretch. It’s the same tort.
Here’s the practical problem. A shipper choosing a broker has access to the same publicly available safety infrastructure that brokers use to vet carriers. The FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System, carrier safety ratings, and SMS BASIC percentile scores are all public — no subscription required. Anyone can run a carrier’s DOT number through FMCSA’s SAFER database and see whether that company carries a “satisfactory,” “conditional,” or “unsatisfactory” safety rating.
A shipper that signs a contract with a broker that has never asked those questions is making a choice. No documented carrier-selection policy. No escalation protocol. No record of what the broker looks at before booking a truck. It’s choosing price, or convenience, or a long-standing relationship, over safety accountability.
According to CCJ’s reporting on the ruling, freight brokers match shippers with more than 780,000 motor carriers operating in the United States. That scale creates an enormous range in vetting quality. Some brokers run rigorous documented processes; others book the cheapest truck that has a valid DOT number and move on. And some carriers — the chameleon outfits that rebrand to shed a bad safety record — work hard to hide their history from anyone who bothers to check. The shipper who never asks which kind it’s dealing with is accepting a risk it may not know it’s accepting.
The questions a shipper should be able to answer about its broker:
A shipper that can’t answer those questions about its broker made a choice not to ask.
This isn’t theoretical for us. Blake Jones and I secured one of the first verdicts in Louisiana holding both a freight broker and shipper vicariously liable for a trucking accident — Knoten v. Westbrook, 193 So.3d 380 (La. App. 4th Cir. 2016). The verdict exceeded $90 million. That case went to a Louisiana jury before most courts had acknowledged that broker liability claims were viable at all.
We know how this theory works. We’ve taken it to a verdict. And in more than 50 years and over $500 million recovered for our clients, we’ve learned what evidence matters when you’re arguing that an entity one step removed from the crash bears responsibility for it.
The Knoten theory — vicarious liability through the shipper-broker relationship — isn’t identical to the negligent-selection argument building under Montgomery. But the underlying premise is the same. When a company puts a dangerous truck on the road by choosing not to look at the available safety information, that company doesn’t get a free pass because the driver technically worked for someone else.
Within days of Montgomery coming down, the Fourth Circuit acted.
As FreightWaves reported, Echo Global Logistics had won summary judgment in 2024 in a case brought by Angela Fuelling, whose husband James was killed when a truck Echo had booked plowed into his pickup on Interstate 85 in South Carolina during a traffic backup. The district court dismissed Echo on FAAAA preemption grounds. Angela Fuelling appealed.
The Fourth Circuit’s order was brief and direct: “The district court’s grant of summary judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings in light of Montgomery v. Caribe Transp. II.” The case that Echo thought it had won in 2024 is starting over.
The Fuelling case is now focused on what Echo Global knew about S&J Logistics — the carrier it booked — before the crash. That’s the inquiry Montgomery unlocked. And it’s exactly the inquiry that, in the right case, extends one more step: what did the shipper know about the broker it chose to move that load?
Cases move fast after a ruling like this. The freight industry is already scrambling to respond to Montgomery. Broker and shipper vetting records are evidence that can disappear. If you were hurt in a trucking accident where a freight broker arranged the load, those files need to be preserved now.
Related reading: Can a Freight Broker Be Held Liable for a Trucking Accident in Louisiana?
According to post-ruling analysis from the Searcy law firm cited in FreightWaves, reasonable broker care under Montgomery will require:
That’s the broker standard. The shipper question is whether it selected a broker equipped and willing to meet it.
Picture the shipper who chose a broker offering the lowest rates with no questions asked. No visible vetting process. No carrier qualification policy on file. That’s a choice a plaintiff’s attorney will look at carefully after a catastrophic crash. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Montgomery noted that brokers who perform “hard questions” and hire reputable carriers should be able to defend themselves successfully. The inverse of that proposition applies equally to the shippers choosing those brokers.
Louisiana’s comparative fault principles under La. Civ. Code art. 2323 mean there’s no reason to stop at any one defendant. Each party in the supply chain can be assigned a percentage of fault proportional to its contribution to the harm.
Think about who can end up on the verdict form: The shipper that chose a broker with no vetting process? The broker that turned around and booked a conditional-rated carrier without documenting a thing? And the carrier whose driver was over his hours when the crash happened? In the right case, every one of them should be answering for it — not just the trucking company whose name is on the door.
The insurance picture matters too. Most carriers hauling general freight carry only the federally required minimum of $750,000 in liability coverage under 49 C.F.R. § 387.9 — rarely enough for a catastrophic crash. Brokers carry contingent liability coverage. Shippers carry their own commercial general liability policies. Getting to the full scope of available insurance means identifying every entity that played a role and building claims against each of them. Stopping at the carrier leaves real money on the table for clients who have already lost everything else.
Related reading: Comparative Fault in Louisiana: What It Means for Your Personal Injury Case
Possibly, and courts will be deciding exactly that question over the next several years. Montgomery doesn’t reach shippers directly — but the legal reasoning it relied on doesn’t end at the broker. If a shipper picked a broker without any inquiry into that broker’s carrier-vetting practices, that decision could look a lot like negligent selection. Call me and I’ll tell you honestly whether the facts in your case support going up the chain.
No. Any company that contracts with a freight broker to move goods has a relationship with that broker. The question is what that company knew or asked about how the broker selects carriers. Size matters less than the choice that was made.
Don’t give a recorded statement to any insurer. Get the carrier’s DOT number — photograph the cab door, it’s usually posted there. Call an attorney quickly. Broker and shipper vetting records and booking communications are the evidence that makes these cases, and they don’t get preserved indefinitely.
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