A Load of Plastic Flowerpots, a Lost Leg, and the...

Quick Summary

Supreme Court unanimously ruled that freight brokers can be held liable for negligently hiring unsafe carriers

The case, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, involved a driver who lost his leg in a truck crash

Federal hours-of-service rules cap driving at 11 hours inside a 14-hour window with mandatory breaks

Critical evidence like driver logs and onboard data must be preserved within six months or disappears

State laws vary dramatically on fault rules and filing deadlines, affecting claim outcomes

A Load of Plastic Flowerpots, a Lost Leg, and the Supreme Court Case That Redrew US Highway Liability

CHICAGO — The truck was hauling plastic pots through Illinois. Nothing about the cargo mattered. What mattered was that the driver veered off course, hit a tractor-trailer, and Shawn Montgomery lost his leg.

Montgomery sued the driver. He sued the trucking company that employed him. Then he sued a third company, C.H. Robinson, which owned no trucks, employed no drivers, and had never been anywhere near the highway that day. Its role was arranging the load and picking the carrier to haul it.

That third lawsuit took roughly seven years to get an answer. It got one this past May, from a unanimous Supreme Court, and it changed the calculus for anyone injured by a commercial truck in the United States.

The Middleman Problem

Freight brokers are the matchmakers of American shipping. A company needs pallets moved from Ohio to Arizona. A broker finds a carrier willing to move them and takes a cut. Roughly 28,000 of them operate in the US, and most travelers have never heard of any of them.

Montgomery's argument was that C.H. Robinson picked badly. He alleged the carrier it hired held a conditional safety rating from federal regulators at the time, tied to problems with driver qualifications and hours-of-service compliance. Pick a carrier with that record, the argument went, and you own part of what happens next.

Brokers had a powerful shield. A 1994 federal deregulation law bars states from enforcing laws related to a broker's price, route, or service. The same law preserves state authority over motor vehicle safety. For years the courts could not agree on which half applied. The Ninth Circuit ruled in 2020 that injured people could sue brokers in Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, 976 F.3d 1016. The Seventh and Eleventh Circuits ruled they could not in cases like Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises, 74 F.4th 453 (7th Cir. 2023). Whether a broker faced liability depended on which state the truck happened to be in.

The Supreme Court took the case, heard argument in March, and reversed. Justice Barrett, writing for all nine justices, held that a claim against a broker for negligently hiring an unsafe carrier concerns motor vehicle safety and survives. Eight pages. No dissent. Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238 (2026). Montgomery gets to make his case.

Why This Is Stranger Than It Sounds

Most people assume a truck crash works like a car crash with bigger vehicles. Two drivers, two insurers, one argument about who ran the light.

The reality behind a single tractor-trailer is a small corporate ecosystem. The driver might be an employee, or an owner-operator leasing himself to a carrier. The tractor and trailer often belong to separate companies. A broker arranged the freight. A warehouse crew loaded it. An outside shop last touched the brakes. Six entities can stand behind one truck, each with separate insurance and separate lawyers.

The money follows the same pattern. Federal law requires a for-hire carrier hauling general freight to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, and most fleets stack policies far above that floor. Exposure at that level buys a fast defense. Investigators for the carrier frequently reach a crash scene the same day, sometimes while the injured driver is still in an ambulance.

The Rulebook Civilians Never See

Cross a state line with freight and you enter a federal regime that has no equivalent for ordinary drivers.

Hours-of-service rules cap driving at 11 hours inside a 14-hour window, with a mandatory break after eight hours at the wheel. Since 2017, most carriers log those hours through electronic devices wired into the truck rather than paper logbooks a driver could tidy up afterward. Carriers must keep qualification files on every driver, run drug and alcohol testing, and service equipment on a schedule.

This shifts what a case is about. In a fender bender, fault lives in the three seconds before impact. In a trucking case, it can live in a dispatch decision three weeks earlier, or in a maintenance record nobody read. Anyone can look up a carrier's federal safety rating and inspection history online, which is exactly what Montgomery's lawyers did.

The Six-Month Clock

Here is the part that surprises people most. The evidence that decides these cases belongs to the trucking company, and federal rules let much of it disappear quickly.

Driver duty logs, including the electronic data from the truck, must be kept for six months.
The carrier's accident register runs three years.
Post-crash testing has hard windows: alcohol within eight hours, drugs within 32.
Onboard computer data, dashcam video, and GPS pings usually overwrite themselves in days or weeks.

No rule forces a company to keep any of it once the clock runs out. A written demand to preserve the records freezes the file if it lands inside the window. The identical letter sent in month seven reaches an empty drawer, and nobody broke a rule in the meantime.

That deadline produces a pattern that looks strange from outside. Among lawyers who build commercial truck cases, the preservation demand often goes out before anyone has read the police report or seen a medical record, because the records vanish on a schedule that has nothing to do with how the injured person is doing. Someone spending those months in a hospital rarely knows the clock is running at all.

Where the Crash Happens Decides a Lot

Federal rules govern how trucking companies behave. State law still decides the lawsuit, and the gaps between states are wide enough to change outcomes on identical facts.

Filing deadlines run anywhere from one year to six, and the clock follows the crash location rather than where the injured person lives. Fault rules diverge harder. Most states reduce a recovery by the injured party's share of blame and cut it off somewhere near half. Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC still apply contributory negligence, where being even slightly at fault can end a claim completely.

So the same collision, same injuries, same evidence, can be worth a great deal in one state and nothing in another. For anyone on a long interstate trip, the applicable law is whatever state the truck found you in.

The Takeaway

Trucking sits under heavy regulation because the harm lands mostly on people outside the truck. Federal fatality data shows 5,340 deaths in large-truck crashes in 2024. Sixty-two percent were people in cars and other passenger vehicles. Only 17 percent were truck occupants, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Fatality Facts 2024.

Montgomery's case says something useful about that imbalance. The company that ended up before the Supreme Court never owned a truck, never hired a driver, and never came within a hundred miles of the crash. Responsibility on American highways reaches further back into the supply chain than most people would guess, and it now reaches the same distance in every state.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Supreme Court decide in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II? The Court unanimously ruled that freight brokers can be held liable for negligently hiring unsafe carriers, rejecting the argument that federal deregulation law shields brokers from state-law safety claims.

How many freight brokers operate in the United States? Approximately 28,000 freight brokers are registered with federal regulators, though this number fluctuates year to year with FMCSA registration counts.

What evidence disappears quickly after a truck crash? Driver duty logs and electronic onboard data must be kept for only six months. Dashcam video, GPS data, and onboard computer records often overwrite themselves within days or weeks.

Why does the crash location matter so much? While federal rules govern trucking company operations, state law determines lawsuit outcomes. Filing deadlines range from one to six years, and fault rules vary dramatically between states.

What are hours-of-service rules for truck drivers? Federal regulations cap driving at 11 hours within a 14-hour window, with mandatory breaks after eight hours at the wheel. Most carriers use electronic logging devices wired into trucks since 2017.

What is contributory negligence? A fault rule still used in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC where being even slightly at fault can completely bar recovery in a personal injury claim.

This article covers general legal concepts and is not legal advice. Rules differ by state, and anyone dealing with a crash should speak with a lawyer licensed where it happened.

Sources: Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238 (2026); Miller v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, 976 F.3d 1016 (9th Cir. 2020); Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises, 74 F.4th 453 (7th Cir. 2023); Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Fatality Facts 2024 (large trucks); FMCSA and 49 CFR Parts 376, 382, 387, 390, and 395.