The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 Thursday that freight brokers can be sued in state courts for crashes involving carriers they hired, settling a long-debated legal question in the industry. The decision in Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II clarified that the safety exception of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A) includes the freight brokerage industry.
The ruling remands the Montgomery case back to the Seventh Circuit, which had previously ruled that brokers were not covered by F4A and therefore state action against them was blocked. With this decision, C.H. Robinson will return to the case as a defendant. The company had booked Caribe Transport II, a carrier with a subpar safety rating, whose truck struck driver Shawn Montgomery on the roadside, resulting in the amputation of his leg and other injuries.
In the opinion penned by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court concluded that negligent-hiring claims "with respect to motor vehicles" include brokers' practices. "Montgomery alleges that C.H. Robinson failed to exercise reasonable care when it hired Caribe Transport," Justice Barrett wrote. "Requiring C.H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier therefore 'concerns' motor vehicles—most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods."
The court dismissed C.H. Robinson's arguments that allowing the safety exception to include brokerages would extend coverage to other activities as well. "The safety exception saves only a subset of preempted claims: those involving regulations concerning motor vehicle safety," Justice Barrett responded. She also addressed arguments about intrastate versus interstate transportation language within F4A, conceding some lack of logical consistency but concluding: "Better to live with the mystery than to rewrite the statute."
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Samuel Alito noted that "this case is closer than the Court's opinion might suggest." The two justices acknowledged that the absence of minimum insurance coverage mandates for brokers "suggests to at least some extent that Congress did not anticipate state tort suits against brokers for negligent selection." However, they concluded that contextual factors "decisively tilt" toward permitting state tort suits against brokers under the broader construction of "with respect to motor vehicles."
Key Takeaways:
1. U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that freight brokers can be sued in state courts for crashes involving carriers they hired.
2. Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II case clarified that F4A's safety exception includes the freight brokerage industry.
3. C.H. Robinson will return as a defendant for hiring Caribe Transport II, which had a subpar safety rating.
4. Justice Amy Coney Barrett's opinion emphasized that brokers' duty of care in carrier selection directly concerns motor vehicles.
5. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito noted the absence of minimum insurance mandates for brokers suggests Congress may not have anticipated such lawsuits.
