Montgomery v. Caribe Transport: Why Brokers Will Now Refuse Your Loads (and How to Stay Bookable)
Quick Answer
On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) preemption provision at 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1) does NOT shield freight brokers from state-law negligent-hiring claims when a carrier they selected causes injury.
On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that freight brokers can be sued under state law for hiring unsafe motor carriers. The decision strips brokers of a federal preemption shield they have used for decades to avoid responsibility when a carrier they dispatched caused a crash. The practical effect for carriers is immediate: brokers will start checking your safety record before they book you, and they will refuse loads to carriers whose record creates legal exposure. This guide explains exactly what changed, what brokers will check, who is at most risk, and the 30-day fix plan to stay bookable.
9-0
Unanimous SCOTUS ruling
May 14, 2026
Decision date
6 items
Brokers will check before booking
30 days
To clean your record
In This Guide
What the Supreme Court Actually Said
The case is Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC. The plaintiff, Shawn Montgomery, is an Illinois driver who lost his leg in 2017 after being struck by a Caribe Transport truck. Caribe was dispatched by C.H. Robinson, the largest freight broker in the United States. Montgomery sued Caribe (the motor carrier) and C.H. Robinson (the broker), alleging that C.H. Robinson negligently hired Caribe despite a record that included a Conditional safety rating and a driver who had been previously cited for careless driving.
C.H. Robinson defended the suit by arguing that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA), at 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1), preempts state-law negligence claims against brokers. That preemption argument has been the standard broker defense in negligent-hiring cases since the late 1990s. Lower courts split on whether the FAAAA preempts state-law claims when the claim falls within the statute's safety exception at § 14501(c)(2)(A), which preserves state authority to regulate safety with respect to motor vehicles.
The Supreme Court resolved that split unanimously, 9-0. The court held that requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a motor carrier directly concerns the motor vehicles that will be on the road, and therefore falls within the safety exception. FAAAA preemption no longer shields brokers from state-law negligent-hiring claims. The case is remanded for further proceedings on the underlying negligence question.
Three things to note about the holding:
- It's unanimous. A 9-0 ruling means there is no live disagreement on the Court about the legal rule. Lower courts have no room to reinterpret.
- It's about state law, not federal regulation. The FMCSA still does not impose safety standards on broker hiring decisions directly. The accountability now flows through state negligence law, which varies by jurisdiction but generally tracks an "ordinary care" standard.
- It does not impose strict liability. Plaintiffs still have to prove that the broker knew or should have known the carrier was unsafe. Brokers acting in good faith with reputable carriers can still win these cases. The goal is accountability, not automatic liability.
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What "Ordinary Care" Means for Brokers
"Ordinary care" is a familiar standard in state tort law. It means the care that a reasonably prudent broker would exercise under the circumstances. In the carrier-selection context, the legal standard maps to a concrete set of practices that the broker's lawyer and E&O insurance underwriter will both demand:
- Check publicly available FMCSA safety data. The FMCSA's Safety Measurement System (SMS) and the Licensing and Insurance (L&I) portal are the obvious sources. A broker who fails to check these has no defense.
- Document the selection process. Every carrier hiring decision must produce a discoverable record showing what was checked, when, and what the result was. Verbal vetting does not survive litigation.
- Refuse carriers with red flags. Conditional safety rating, recent serious violations, OOS rate above national average, missing or expired Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse queries — these create foreseeable risk that a reasonably prudent broker would not accept.
- Maintain a written carrier-vetting policy. The policy must define what is checked, how often, and what disqualifies a carrier. Inconsistent application of an unwritten policy is the easiest way to lose a Montgomery-style case.
The standard is not "perfect." It is "reasonable." A broker who hires a carrier with a Satisfactory rating, current insurance, no recent serious violations, and a documented vetting process will be on the defensible side of ordinary care, even if that carrier later causes a crash. The carriers who get refused are the ones whose record cannot support the broker's defense.
The 6 Things Brokers Will Check on Your Record
Based on the language in the ruling, the new E&O underwriting requirements, and the carrier-vetting standards already used by the largest brokers, expect the following six checks on every carrier before they book a load:
1. FMCSA Safety Rating
Satisfactory, Conditional, or Unsatisfactory. Conditional is now the most common reason for an immediate broker refusal because the legal exposure is too obvious to defend.
49 CFR Part 385
2. Driver and Vehicle OOS Rates
Out-of-service rates relative to the national average. An above-average OOS rate signals systemic safety issues. Brokers will check both the driver and the vehicle rate.
FMCSA SMS public data
3. CSA BASICs Scores
The five BASICs brokers weight most: Unsafe Driving, Hours of Service, Vehicle Maintenance, Controlled Substances, and Crash Indicator. Percentile above intervention threshold is a refusal trigger.
FMCSA SMS
4. Recent Inspection History
Last 24 months of roadside inspections. Specific violations brokers will flag: OOS-defect maintenance, driver license issues, HOS pattern, controlled substances.
FMCSA SMS / Inspection Selection System
5. Driver Qualification File Completeness
The 6 DQF items under 49 CFR 391: application, medical certificate, MVR, certificate of violations, road test / CDL equivalency, Clearinghouse query. Any gap is grounds for refusal.
49 CFR 391
6. Active COI with Required Limits
$750K minimum federal liability for general property (49 CFR 387). Brokers will require $1M-$2M depending on cargo, plus naming the broker as additional insured.
49 CFR 387
The pattern across all six checks: they are all visible in publicly available data or in documentation that the broker can demand directly from the carrier. None of them require a deep audit. A broker can run all six checks in 10 minutes if the carrier's documentation is in order, or refuse the load if it is not.
Which Carriers Face the Most Immediate Risk
The carriers who will feel the squeeze first, in roughly this order:
- Conditional or Unsatisfactory safety rating. Most large brokers' E&O underwriters are now explicitly excluding coverage for negligent-hiring claims involving carriers with non-Satisfactory ratings. That exclusion forces the broker to refuse the load or hire at uninsured risk. Almost every broker will choose to refuse.
- OOS rate above national average. The 2025 national driver OOS rate was approximately 5.5%; vehicle OOS rate was approximately 20.0%. Carriers materially above these get treated as elevated-risk hires.
- Recent serious violation (last 12 months). Patterns to avoid: HOS / ELD violations, controlled-substance violations, hazmat violations, OOS-defect maintenance violations, fatigued-driver violations.
- Missing Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse query. Under 49 CFR 382.701, pre-employment full queries and annual limited queries are required. A broker checking your record will see whether queries are current. Missing queries put the driver in violation, which puts your carrier operation in violation, which puts the broker in legal exposure for hiring you.
- Lapsed or insufficient COI. Filing of MCS-90 / Form BMC-91 visible in L&I, but real underlying coverage often lapses without the L&I record updating in real time. Brokers will demand current certificate of insurance directly from carrier, with the broker listed as certificate holder.
- MCS-150 update overdue. The biennial MCS-150 update under 49 CFR 390.19 is required every 24 months. An overdue update can result in operating authority being deactivated. Brokers checking your status will see the L&I red flag.
When This Will Hit Your Load Book
The effect rolls out in waves:
- Week 1-2 (now). Trade press, legal alerts, broker association memos. Big brokers update internal vetting policies and software. Some early refusals at the load level.
- Week 3-6. E&O insurance renewals force documentation requirements down to the load level. Broker software updates push carrier-record screens into the dispatch workflow. Refusal volume rises significantly.
- Month 2-3. First wave of Montgomery-style cases filed against brokers in state courts. Plaintiff lawyers begin specializing in this niche. Defense lawyers calibrate ordinary-care standards. Industry norms calcify.
- Month 4-6. Vetting software and broker-side workflow tools become standard. Carriers without clean records and audit-ready documentation become structurally hard to book. Insurance premiums for carriers with bad records spike.
- Month 6-12. The vetting standard hardens into industry practice. Carriers who waited start losing material revenue. Carriers who acted are stable.
The window to act without losing significant revenue is the first 90 days. Carriers who close the gaps in their documentation now will not show up as outliers when broker vetting software starts screening at scale.
The 30-Day Fix Plan
The plan is the same regardless of fleet size. The order matters because each step depends on the previous one.
Days 1-3: Audit your own record
Pull your SMS public record and your L&I record. Note your safety rating, your OOS rates, your BASIC percentiles, and any violations in the last 24 months. Run the FileFlo audit tool to map what brokers will see to what you can fix. Do not fix anything yet — first you need the full picture.
Days 4-10: Close DQF gaps for every active driver
For every active driver, verify all six DQF items: current employment application, current DOT medical card, annual MVR review within 12 months, annual certificate of violations, road test or CDL equivalency, Clearinghouse query (pre-employment full plus annual limited). Any gap is the easiest reason for a broker to refuse you. Fix them in this order: expired medical cards first, missing Clearinghouse queries second, missing annual MVRs third.
Days 11-15: Verify insurance and operating authority
Confirm your COI is current and meets the federal minimums (49 CFR 387). Confirm your MCS-150 update is current within 24 months. Confirm your operating authority status in L&I shows "Active." Get an updated COI from your insurer that names brokers as additional insured by default — most brokers will require this on every load and a generic certificate will slow the booking.
Days 16-22: Address Conditional rating or open BASIC violations
If you have a Conditional rating, start the corrective-action process under 49 CFR Part 385. Document each finding from your most recent compliance review and the specific corrective action you are taking. If you have open BASIC violations crossing intervention thresholds, prioritize the BASIC with the highest percentile first — that is the one brokers will flag. The corrective action plan must be documented in writing with dates and signatures.
Days 23-30: Build the broker-ready packet
Assemble a single packet that contains everything a broker will ask for: operating authority confirmation, current COI with broker as certificate holder, safety rating documentation, MCS-150 update confirmation, written drug & alcohol program plus recent test summary, DQF for the dispatched driver, ELD compliance attestation, last 12 months of inspection history. The first carrier to deliver this packet usually books the load. Store it in one place and update it as items expire.
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Where FileFlo Fits
The 30-day plan above is the same work every carrier needs to do post-ruling. FileFlo automates the documentation half: it classifies every document you upload, tracks expirations, alerts you when something is about to lapse, and assembles the broker-ready packet on demand. The operational half — fixing your OOS rate, reducing BASIC violations, training drivers — is on you. FileFlo's job is to make sure your documentation never costs you a load that your operations earned.
FileFlo's Pro tier ($299/mo, unlimited drivers and documents) includes the Broker-Ready Share Link feature: one click in your account generates a tokenized URL that any broker can open to verify your DQF, COI, safety rating, drug program, and inspection history in one tap. No login required for the broker. Rolling out to Pro accounts this month.
The Starter tier ($89/mo, up to 3 users) gives you the same document tracking and audit trail, suitable for owner-operators and small fleets up to ~10 drivers. Both tiers include the 5-day free trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) preemption provision at 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(1) does NOT shield freight brokers from state-law negligent-hiring claims when a carrier they selected causes injury. The court held that requiring a broker to use ordinary care in selecting a motor carrier falls within the statute's safety exception at § 14501(c)(2)(A), because it 'directly concerns the motor vehicles' that operate on public roads. The practical effect: a broker who hires a carrier with red flags (Conditional safety rating, recent OOS violations, problematic driver records) and that carrier later causes a crash can be sued by injured plaintiffs under state tort law, just like any other negligent hirer. Plaintiffs still have to prove that the broker knew or should have known the carrier was unsafe — the ruling did not create automatic liability, only a path to liability that was previously preempted.
They will, and most already are. The E&O (errors and omissions) insurance market for transportation brokers began re-rating policies within 48 hours of the ruling. Underwriters are demanding that brokers document their carrier-vetting process, refuse carriers with Conditional ratings, and maintain a defensible record of every selection decision. That documentation requirement flows directly to the load level: every dispatch creates a potential discoverable record. Faced with that exposure, most brokers will move fast in one direction — refuse carriers whose record creates obvious legal risk. The first carriers to feel the effect are those with Conditional or Unsatisfactory safety ratings, recent OOS history, and missing or expired Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse queries. The squeeze gets tighter from there.
A Satisfactory rating is the right starting point, but it isn't a guarantee that brokers will book you. Brokers will look past the headline rating at the underlying data: your OOS rate (driver and vehicle), your CSA BASIC scores, your last 24 months of inspection history, and specific violation patterns. A Satisfactory rating with a recent serious violation (HOS pattern, OOS-defect maintenance, controlled substances) will still draw broker scrutiny. The bar after Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II is not 'do you have a passable rating' — it is 'does my paper trail support that the carrier I just hired was a defensible choice.' A clean record across the board is the new minimum to stay bookable without friction.
Ordinary care is the standard of care that a reasonably prudent broker would exercise under the circumstances. It is defined by state tort law, not by FMCSA regulation, so the specific definition varies by jurisdiction. What is consistent across courts is the underlying expectation: a broker should check publicly available safety data before hiring a carrier, document the basis for the hiring decision, and refuse carriers whose record creates an obvious foreseeable risk. The FMCSA's public Safety Measurement System (SMS) and the Licensing & Insurance (L&I) portal are the obvious data sources. Plaintiff lawyers will argue that any broker who failed to check these sources, or who hired despite red flags visible in them, fell short of ordinary care. Brokers who maintain a documented vetting workflow with timestamped evidence will have the strongest defense.
The Montgomery ruling is specifically about brokers (entities that arrange transportation for compensation under 49 U.S.C. § 13102(2)). However, the underlying common-law negligent-hiring doctrine has always applied to shippers who directly hire carriers, and the elimination of FAAAA preemption removes a defense brokers used to share with shippers in joint litigation. Shippers who use brokers to arrange transportation are partly insulated by that intermediary structure, but shippers who hire carriers directly face the same ordinary-care standard. Expect shippers with direct carrier programs (private fleets, dedicated lanes) to harden their vetting workflows too.
The effect is rolling. The first carriers to feel it are those flagged for refusal by broker software (factoring services, load board screens, dispatch systems) within the first 30 days. The second wave hits at the insurance renewal cycle — most broker E&O policies renew quarterly or semi-annually, and renewal underwriting will explicitly demand vetting documentation. The third wave hits in litigation: as Montgomery-style cases get filed and settled, the legal record will calcify into industry-standard practices. Carriers who get ahead of this in the next 90 days (clean their record, get audit-ready documentation in place, eliminate obvious red flags) will be on the comfortable side of every broker's vetting algorithm. Carriers who wait will be on the wrong side.
Smaller carriers and owner-operators are affected more, for a structural reason: large fleets typically maintain compliance documentation as a matter of course because their insurance and contractual relationships already require it. Small carriers and owner-operators are more likely to have gaps in DQF maintenance, drug program documentation, or annual MVR reviews — the exact items brokers will check before booking. The good news is that small fleets can close those gaps faster than a large fleet can, because there are fewer drivers and assets to manage. The bad news is that the cost of a single broker refusing your loads is proportionally larger for a small operation.
Brokers (under 49 U.S.C. § 13102(2)) are entities that arrange transportation between shippers and motor carriers for compensation, without taking possession of the freight or operating equipment themselves. Examples: C.H. Robinson, Coyote, TQL, Echo. Shippers are the parties whose cargo is being transported. The Montgomery ruling specifically addressed the broker scenario because C.H. Robinson is a broker, but the FAAAA preemption defense was historically asserted by both brokers and shippers in negligent-hiring litigation. Stripping that defense from brokers indirectly weakens it for shippers in joint cases. Practically, the entities that will most aggressively change their vetting practices are large brokers and 3PLs, then mid-size brokers, then direct shippers with active carrier programs.
No software platform can guarantee that. What FileFlo does is keep the underlying documentation that brokers will check current, complete, and audit-ready: driver qualification files, drug & alcohol program records, MVRs, medical certificates, certificates of violations, Clearinghouse queries, insurance certificates, MCS-150 currency. Most carriers fail broker vetting on documentation gaps rather than safety performance — expired medical certificates, missing annual MVR reviews, incomplete DQFs. FileFlo's job is to make sure those gaps don't exist. The safety performance side (improving your OOS rate, reducing BASIC violations) is operational work; FileFlo supports it with audit trails and corrective-action documentation, but the operational change is on you.
Yes. Under 49 CFR Part 385, a carrier assigned a Conditional or Unsatisfactory rating may request a change in safety rating after demonstrating corrective action. The process: complete a corrective action plan addressing each finding from the compliance review, document the implementation of those corrections, then request a follow-up review through FMCSA. The typical timeline from request to upgrade is 90-120 days if the corrective action is fully implemented. The single most common reason a request fails is incomplete documentation of the corrective action — the corrections were made, but the carrier could not produce signed, dated records showing they were made. FileFlo's audit trail addresses this directly: every document change, training session, and policy update is logged with timestamp and user attribution, producing the evidence trail FMCSA needs to verify the corrective action.
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