What the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Caribe Decision Means for Shippers

This morning, May 14, 2026, the United States Supreme Court decided *Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC* — and it decided it 9-0 against the freight industry's longest-running liability shield. Justice Barrett wrote for a unanimous Court. The holding, in one line: the FAAAA does not preempt state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers, because those claims fall within the statute's safety exception, and brokers owe a duty of ordinary care when they select carriers.

Almost every headline you'll read about this decision is aimed at brokers. Fair enough — the named defendant was a broker (C.H. Robinson), and the doctrine is most directly about broker liability. But if you're a *shipper*, you should not read this as someone else's problem. Montgomery reaches you, through several doors at once. This is the shipper's read on what just happened and what to do about it.

What the Court actually held

Briefly, because the facts matter and they're instructive. Shawn Montgomery was driving on an Illinois interstate in 2019 when a Caribe Transport II tractor-trailer crossed the median and struck his car; he survived but lost his left leg below the knee. The driver had been awake for 22 of the previous 28 hours and had a documented two-year history of hours-of-service violations. C.H. Robinson had tendered the load. At the time of selection, Caribe held a Conditional safety rating, was in Alert status for both Hours-of-Service Compliance and Unsafe Driving, and had crash rates roughly three times the national average — *all of it free and public on FMCSA's website on the day the load was tendered.*

Robinson argued the negligence claim was preempted by the FAAAA (49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)), which bars state laws "related to" a broker's price, route, or service. The lower courts agreed and dismissed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that (1) the FAAAA's safety exception preserves state authority over motor-vehicle safety, and negligent-selection claims fall within it; and (2) common-law duties of ordinary care are background obligations of general applicability, not state regulation of broker "services." Brokers owe a duty of ordinary care in carrier selection. Full stop.

Door one: the carriers you tender directly

Here's the first reason this is a shipper issue. Most shippers tender at least *some* freight directly to carriers — dedicated lanes, a favorite regional hauler, backhauls, drop-trailer programs. Every one of those is a carrier selection *you* made, with no broker in between.

Montgomery is formally about brokers, but the duty it recognizes — ordinary care in selecting a carrier because an unsafe carrier foreseeably endangers the public — is a general negligence principle. It is not somehow unique to brokers. A shipper that directly selects a carrier is exercising the same kind of selection judgment, and the same negligent-selection theory has long been available against shippers under the same Restatement § 411 logic. Montgomery's significance for your direct tenders is that it removes the *preemption* argument that brokers (and, by extension, shippers) used to hope might short-circuit these claims. The merits — did you exercise reasonable care? — now get reached. Your direct tenders are your most exposed loads, and they're often your least documented.

Door two: the brokers you choose

The second door is subtler and, for large shippers, the more important one. You hire brokers precisely so you don't vet carriers yourself. Does Montgomery's broker duty insulate you, since the duty falls on the broker?

Partly — *if* the broker actually discharges it, and *if* your selection of the broker was itself reasonable. Montgomery makes broker carrier-selection a legal duty, which means a broker who drops that duty is now more clearly exposed. But plaintiffs sue up the entire chain, and when they do, the question for the shipper becomes: did *you* exercise reasonable care in choosing and overseeing your brokers? If your broker's "vetting" turns out to be hollow — a stale onboarding packet, no tender-date review, no records — the negligent-selection theory simply steps up one link to you.

The practical implication: after Montgomery, "our broker handles vetting" is only a defense if the broker genuinely vets *and can prove it.* That turns broker selection into a due-diligence exercise of its own. The sophisticated move is to require your brokers, contractually, to screen carriers against a defined standard and retain the records — and to verify they can actually produce them.

Door three: the standard a jury now expects

The third door is about expectations. Montgomery is a unanimous Supreme Court decision, widely reported, that establishes — in the public mind and the plaintiff's bar's playbook — that checking a carrier's safety before entrusting it with a heavy truck is simply *what responsible companies do.* That raises the baseline for everyone in the chain, shippers included.

When a future jury hears that catastrophic-injury data was free and public on the tender date, the post-Montgomery framing is unforgiving: a responsible company looks. The Court itself emphasized that the Caribe data required "no paid subscription, no phone call — it was free, public, and one query away." That sentence is going to be quoted in negligent-selection cases for the next decade, and it applies with equal force to a shipper's direct tender as to a broker's.

What shippers should do now

None of this requires panic. It requires that you make your carrier diligence *real and provable* — for direct tenders, and across your broker relationships. Concretely:

1. **Document your direct tenders.** For any carrier you engage directly, capture a timestamped record of the carrier's FMCSA safety profile on the tender date, against a written standard. This is the single highest-value step for a shipper, because direct tenders are your most exposed and least documented loads.

2. **Put vetting in your broker contracts.** Require brokers to screen carriers against a defined standard before each tender, to capture carrier attestations, and to retain records for a period that matches litigation exposure. Reserve a right to audit.

3. **Verify, don't trust.** Periodically ask a broker to produce the screening record for a specific load. Their response is your due diligence on them — document it.

4. **Write down your standard.** A one-page carrier-selection standard means that "reasonable care" is defined by *you*, not by a plaintiff's expert after the fact.

5. **Retain everything.** Negligent-selection claims surface years later. Records purged after 90 days are no records at all when the subpoena arrives.

The throughline: documented due diligence

Montgomery doesn't ask shippers or brokers to be perfect. It asks them to exercise *ordinary care* — and, functionally, to be able to *prove* they did. The Court just told the entire freight industry that carrier safety is a duty, not a courtesy, and that the data to discharge it is free and public. The only question left, on every load, is whether you looked and whether you can show it.

That's exactly what DOTScreener was built to produce, and Montgomery is the reason it matters more today than it did yesterday: per-load screening against live FMCSA data, timestamped at tender, with the carrier's attestation, retained as a defensible record. For your direct tenders, it's your proof of reasonable care. For your brokered freight, it's the standard to hold your brokers to. The shield brokers leaned on is gone. The thing that replaces it is documentation — yours included.

— Mason Lavallet

Founder, DOTScreener.com

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Sources

• *Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC*, 608 U.S. ___ (2026) — unanimous opinion (Barrett, J.)
• [49 U.S.C. § 14501(c) — FAAAA preemption and the motor-vehicle safety exception](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/14501)
• [Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 — Negligent Selection of an Independent Contractor](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/negligent_hiring)
• [FMCSA SAFER Company Snapshot](https://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/CompanySnapshot.aspx) — the free, public safety data the Court emphasized
• [FMCSA Safety Measurement System (CSA BASICs)](https://csa.fmcsa.dot.gov/) — Conditional ratings and Alert-status percentiles