The Supreme Court and the Most Important Freight Broker Liability Case in Years
The big picture: A case that could reshape broker exposure to personal injury lawsuits was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last week, and the freight brokerage industry was in the room.
Marc Blubaugh, co-chair of the transportation and logistics practice at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff and outside general counsel for TIA, attended oral arguments in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II LLC in person, sitting roughly 20 feet from the justices. He joined a TIA livestream days later to break down what happened
The case in brief: A driver injured in a highway collision sued the driver of the tractor-trailer as well as the motor carrier, Caribe Transport II, LLC, and the freight broker, C.H. Robinson. C.H. Robinson was included because they hired the trucking company. C.H. Robinson argued any claims against them are preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act(F4A), a federal statute designed to prevent states from regulating the prices, routes, and services of carriers and brokers. Lower courts sided with C.H. Robinson. The Supreme Court agreed to hear it.
The core question: does a so-called safety exception included in the F4A save negligent selection claims against brokers from preemption, or are brokers protected?
Why it matters: Federal circuits are currently split. Brokers in the Ninth and Sixth Circuits, covering California, Ohio, Michigan, and others, are exposed to these claims. Brokers in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits, including Illinois, Georgia, and Florida, are currently protected. A Supreme Court ruling will settle that inconsistency nationwide, in one direction or the other.
Four takeaways from the courtroom:
Justice Kavanaugh cited the TIA’s amicus brief by name, pressing plaintiff’s counsel on the practical impossibility of broker compliance. How would a broker assess a driver’s English proficiency? Substance use history? “Whatever you do as a broker is never enough for the plaintiff’s personal injury bar,” Blubaugh noted. “And if you do too much, they claim you’re vicariously liable because now you’re controlling the motor carrier.”
Plaintiff’s counsel never offered a satisfying answer. Blubaugh said Kavanaugh returned to the theme several times, and each time the response amounted to brokers should simply hire “quality carriers”, with no definition of what that means.
Proximate cause generated more discussion than Blubaugh expected, with some justices suggesting brokers could simply win these cases on that basis rather than preemption. Blubaugh pushed back on that framing: “Telling a broker to defend on proximate cause is cold comfort. It almost inevitably becomes an issue of fact, and the broker will have spent exorbitant amounts of money defending the claim” before it ever gets resolved, frustrating the Congressional intent.
An apparent anomaly in the statute, that a neighboring subsection doesn’t carry the same safety exception, drew pointed questions from Chief Justice Roberts and others. Plaintiff’s counsel acknowledged the inconsistency didn’t make sense but pressed forward anyway. The U.S. Solicitor General, filing in support of C.H. Robinson, argued there was no anomaly at all if the statute is read the way the brokerage community reads it.
What comes next: A decision is expected before the court’s summer recess, late June or early July at the latest. Blubaugh was careful not to predict the outcome, noting that attorneys on both sides of the issue came away from oral arguments reading the tea leaves very differently.
“It is devilishly difficult to predict outcomes,” he said. “You don’t want to read too much into the questions of certain justices.”
The bottom line: This case has been working through the courts for years, and the industry finally has its answer coming. For freight brokers, the stakes are straightforward, a ruling against C.H. Robinson would mean expanded liability exposure across the country. A ruling in its favor would establish the uniform federal protection the industry has long argued it deserves.
