For years, freight brokers operated with a reliable legal shield. When a carrier they dispatched caused a catastrophic crash, brokers could often get negligent hiring claims against them dismissed early, before discovery, before depositions, before any real examination of how the carrier was actually vetted. That shield rested on a single argument: federal law preempted these claims entirely. On May 14, 2026, the United States Supreme Court removed that shield in a unanimous decision that reshapes freight broker liability across the country, including in Texas.
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC is not a Texas case, and it did not arise from Texas law. But its effect reaches every state, including Texas, where the freight brokerage industry moves an enormous volume of commercial freight through Houston, Dallas Fort Worth, and the I-10, I-45, and I-35 corridors every day. For shippers, brokers, carriers, and anyone injured by a commercial truck on a Texas highway, this decision changes the legal landscape in a way that is worth understanding in detail.
What the Montgomery v. Caribe Transport Decision Actually Held
The case began with a catastrophic injury. Shawn Montgomery had pulled his tractor trailer to the shoulder of an Illinois highway when a truck driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena, operating for motor carrier Caribe Transport II, LLC, veered off the road and struck him. Montgomery sued the carrier and the driver, and he also sued C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., the freight broker that had arranged the shipment, alleging that C.H. Robinson negligently hired Caribe Transport despite the carrier’s conditional safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and documented deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service compliance, and vehicle maintenance.
The lower courts dismissed the negligent hiring claim against C.H. Robinson on preemption grounds, following earlier appellate precedent holding that federal law barred these claims against brokers as a category. The Supreme Court disagreed, unanimously. In a 9 to 0 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, with a concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that a state law negligent hiring claim against a freight broker is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, because the claim falls within the statute’s safety exception. Requiring a broker to exercise ordinary care in selecting a safe carrier, the Court reasoned, directly concerns the safety of the motor vehicles that will ultimately be on the road.
The result is straightforward but significant. Negligent hiring and negligent selection claims against freight brokers can now proceed under state law, in Texas courts as much as anywhere else, without being cut off at the pleading stage by a blanket federal preemption defense.
Why FAAAA Preemption No Longer Automatically Protects Brokers
The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, commonly referred to as the FAAAA, generally preempts state laws related to a broker’s prices, routes, or services, a framework originally designed to prevent a patchwork of inconsistent state economic regulation from interfering with the national transportation market. For years, freight brokers argued, often successfully, that a negligent hiring claim was really just a disguised attempt to regulate how a broker selects its carriers, which brokers characterized as a core “service” covered by preemption.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Montgomery rejected that framing. The FAAAA contains an express safety exception, preserving state authority to regulate safety with respect to motor vehicles, and the Court concluded that a broker’s duty to use reasonable care in selecting a safe carrier fits squarely within that exception rather than the preempted category of economic regulation. In other words, a claim asserting that a broker knowingly or carelessly dispatched a demonstrably unsafe carrier is a safety claim, not a pricing or service claim, and Texas courts are free to apply ordinary negligence principles to it.
This does not mean every claim against a broker will now automatically survive early motions. Preemption is no longer an automatic dismissal tool, but plaintiffs still have to prove the elements of a negligent hiring claim under state law: that the broker owed a duty of reasonable care, that it breached that duty by failing to adequately vet the carrier, and that the breach caused the resulting harm. What has changed is that brokers can no longer rely on preemption alone to avoid that inquiry altogether. The case now has to be argued and, in many instances, litigated through discovery on the merits.
The Role of CSA Scores and SMS Data in a Negligent Selection Claim
Once a negligent hiring claim against a broker is allowed to proceed past the pleading stage, the central factual question becomes what the broker knew, or should have known, about the carrier’s safety record at the time it made the dispatch decision. This is where the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, commonly known as CSA, and its underlying Safety Measurement System, or SMS, data become central to the case.
The SMS tracks a carrier’s performance across several safety categories, including unsafe driving, hours of service compliance, driver fitness, controlled substances and alcohol, vehicle maintenance, and crash indicator history, generating scores that are used to flag carriers with elevated safety risk. This data, along with a carrier’s overall safety rating (satisfactory, conditional, or unsatisfactory), is publicly available through FMCSA’s systems and is the kind of information a reasonably careful broker is generally expected to review before dispatching freight to a carrier.
In the Montgomery case itself, the plaintiff pointed specifically to Caribe Transport’s conditional safety rating and documented deficiencies as evidence that C.H. Robinson knew or should have known the carrier posed an unreasonable risk. Going forward, this kind of documented safety data, and whether a broker actually reviewed it, actually acted on red flags it revealed, or simply ignored it in favor of price or availability, is likely to become a central battleground in negligent selection litigation, in Texas and everywhere else.
What This Means for Broker Vetting Practices Going Forward
For freight brokers operating in Texas, the practical implication of Montgomery is that the vetting process used to select a motor carrier is no longer just a business practice, it is a legal exposure point that can be examined in detail during litigation. A broker’s internal file on why it selected a particular carrier, what safety data it reviewed, what red flags it may have overlooked, and what its own internal policies required before dispatch, can all become evidence in a negligent hiring claim following a serious crash.
This shift is likely to accelerate a trend already underway in the industry: brokers formalizing and documenting their carrier vetting procedures, checking and recording CSA scores and safety ratings before each engagement rather than relying on a one time onboarding review, and building a defensible paper trail showing that reasonable care was actually exercised. Brokers that continue to treat carrier vetting casually, relying primarily on price and capacity rather than documented safety review, are now taking on meaningfully higher litigation risk than they were before May 2026.
It is also worth noting what Montgomery did not decide. The ruling addressed broker liability specifically and did not expand liability for shippers, the businesses that hire brokers to arrange transportation but do not themselves select the carrier. That distinction matters for businesses trying to understand where their own exposure begins and ends in a multi party freight transaction.
How This Intersects With a Personal Injury Claim Against a Carrier
For someone injured in a serious commercial trucking accident, Montgomery adds an important additional avenue of potential recovery, separate from and in addition to a claim against the carrier and driver directly. In a catastrophic truck accident case, the motor carrier’s insurance coverage is not always sufficient to fully compensate for the medical costs, lost income, and long term impact of a serious injury, particularly when the carrier is a smaller operation with limited assets or minimum required coverage.
When a freight broker arranged the shipment and failed to adequately vet a carrier with a documented poor safety record, a negligent hiring claim against that broker can open up an entirely separate source of potential recovery, often through the broker’s own commercial liability coverage. Identifying whether a broker was involved in a shipment, and what that broker knew or should have known about the carrier’s safety history, is now a critical early investigative step in any serious Texas trucking accident case, not an afterthought.
This is precisely the kind of multi party analysis that requires understanding both the personal injury side of a case and the commercial and regulatory framework governing brokers and carriers, evaluating liability, coverage, and safety documentation across every party involved in getting that truck on the road in the first place.
Practical Steps for Brokers to Reduce Exposure
For Texas freight brokers assessing their own exposure after Montgomery, several practical steps can meaningfully reduce risk going forward. Reviewing and documenting a carrier’s FMCSA safety rating and CSA scores before every dispatch, not just at initial onboarding, creates a contemporaneous record showing reasonable care was exercised at the time it mattered. Establishing clear, written internal policies defining what safety thresholds disqualify a carrier from consideration, and consistently following those policies, helps demonstrate that vetting decisions were principled rather than ad hoc.
Maintaining organized records of every vetting decision, including the specific safety data reviewed and the reasoning behind carrier selection, gives a broker something concrete to point to if a claim is later filed. Regularly auditing carriers already in a broker’s network, rather than assuming an initial vetting remains valid indefinitely, addresses the reality that a carrier’s safety record can deteriorate over time. Finally, reviewing existing commercial liability coverage with an eye toward this newly clarified exposure, rather than assuming preemption will continue to limit claims, is a conversation worth having with counsel and insurers alike before an incident occurs, not after.
Frequently Asked Questions About Freight Broker Liability After Montgomery
What is freight broker negligent hiring?
Negligent hiring, in this context, refers to a claim that a freight broker failed to exercise reasonable care in selecting a motor carrier, dispatching a carrier despite known or discoverable safety deficiencies that made the carrier an unreasonably dangerous choice, and that this failure contributed to a resulting accident.
Does FAAAA preemption still protect brokers in Texas?
No longer automatically. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, the FAAAA’s safety exception allows negligent hiring claims against freight brokers to proceed under state law, including in Texas. Preemption is no longer a reliable early dismissal tool for these claims.
What are CSA scores and why do they matter?
CSA scores come from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program and its Safety Measurement System, which track a carrier’s performance across categories like unsafe driving, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and crash history. These scores are increasingly central to evaluating whether a broker knew or should have known that a carrier posed an unreasonable safety risk.
Can I sue a broker after a truck accident?
Depending on the facts, a negligent hiring claim against the broker that arranged the shipment may be possible if the broker failed to adequately vet the carrier’s safety record. Whether such a claim applies to your situation depends on what the broker knew, what data was available, and how the carrier was selected.
How should brokers change their vetting process?
Brokers should consider documenting a thorough, repeatable safety review of each carrier before every dispatch, including CSA scores and safety ratings, establishing clear internal standards for disqualifying unsafe carriers, and maintaining organized records showing that vetting decisions were made carefully and consistently.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Freight broker liability is a rapidly evolving area of law following the Montgomery decision, and how it applies to a specific transaction or accident depends on the facts involved. If you are a broker assessing your exposure, or someone injured in a trucking accident, an attorney can evaluate the specifics of your situation.
Whether you are a business navigating broker liability exposure or someone injured in a serious trucking accident, Herrera PLLC can help you understand your options. Learn more about our civil litigation practice or our representation in truck accident cases, or call 832-891-3210 to contact us for a free, confidential consultation.
Jonathan Herrera, J.D. is a Houston based attorney and the founder of Herrera PLLC, representing businesses, carriers, and injured individuals in civil litigation and serious injury matters across Texas. Before practicing law, he spent over a decade as a licensed insurance adjuster managing high exposure casualty claims, including commercial trucking and industrial cases, for carriers and third party administrators, and he later practiced insurance defense before founding Herrera PLLC. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association for Justice.
