Industry Alert
The U.S. Supreme Court's May 14, 2026 ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe changes the freight broker liability conversation. Here is what happened, why it matters for shippers, and how Cowtown vets carriers before a load ever moves.
TL;DR
A landmark 9-0 ruling just exposed brokers who do not properly vet their carriers. Here is what it means for your freight, and how Cowtown is already ahead of it.
In 2017, a truck driver for a carrier called Caribe Transport II was hauling a load of plastic pots through Illinois. The load was arranged by C.H. Robinson, one of the largest freight brokers in the country. The driver veered off course in his Mack truck and struck a tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder of the road.
The driver of that parked truck, Shawn Montgomery, lost his leg and sustained permanent, life-altering injuries.
Montgomery sued C.H. Robinson. His argument was straightforward. Caribe Transport had a conditional safety rating from the FMCSA when C.H. Robinson hired them. The carrier had already been flagged for driver qualification failures, hours-of-service violations, poor maintenance records, and an elevated crash rate. Montgomery argued the broker knew or should have known that putting this carrier on the road was a foreseeable danger to everyone on that highway.
For years, C.H. Robinson used a federal law called the FAAAA to get these kinds of state-level lawsuits thrown out. On May 14, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that shield is gone for good.
The ruling means freight brokers can now be held liable under state law when they negligently select an unsafe carrier. The FAAAA’s safety exception preserves every state’s right to bring these claims. That resolves a split among federal appeals courts and changes the legal landscape for all 28,000 freight brokers operating in the United States.
“If brokers were preempted from state tort law with no federal safety standards to fill the void, they would operate in a black hole with no meaningful safety-related regulation at all.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring opinion
This ruling is a wake-up call for anyone moving freight. Whether you are using a broker or booking a carrier directly, you now have a roadmap for the questions to ask and the boxes to check before a truck ever leaves your dock.
Here is what to look for:
On insurance, the baseline to confirm today is contingent auto liability . This coverage steps in when a carrier’s primary auto policy fails to pay out after an accident, which happens more often than most shippers realize. As the legal landscape develops post-Montgomery, more insurance layers may become relevant.
We have been doing this the right way since day one. At Cowtown, our carrier vetting process is rigorous, documented, and applied to every single carrier we consider placing on a load.
The red flags present in the Caribe Transport situation, including a conditional safety rating, driver qualification failures, and an elevated crash rate, are exactly what our screening process is built to identify and reject before a truck ever gets dispatched.
Our process includes:
In the last three years, Cowtown has moved 43,200 loads with 10 total accidents, a 0.023 percent accident rate. The industry average is roughly 0.2 percent. That means Cowtown runs at nearly 10 times better than the industry average. We were not named in a single lawsuit, and neither were our clients.
This ruling does not change how we operate. It confirms why we operate the way we do. Discovery requests in post-Montgomery lawsuits will seek carrier vetting procedures, internal screening criteria, communications with carriers, and any safety data that was reviewed or ignored. We are prepared to stand behind every decision we make because we document all of it.
Regardless of who you broker with, ask the hard questions:
A broker worth trusting will have solid answers.
If you have questions, reach out and we will walk you through our process.
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