What the Montgomery Ruling Means for Small Freight Brokers

The Montgomery ruling means a small freight brokerage can now be sued in state court for negligently selecting a carrier — the ordinary-negligence duty applies to a one-person shop exactly as it applies to a national 3PL, because state negligence law has no small-business exemption. The good news is that the defense also scales down: the Supreme Court asked whether the broker exercised "ordinary care" in choosing the carrier, and ordinary care is a documented, consistent vetting process, not a legal department.

In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238 (decided May 14, 2026), the Court held 9-0 that state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the FAAAA, because they fall within the statute's safety exception (49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)(2)(A)). We cover the ruling itself in depth in our Montgomery explainer; this guide is about what it means in practice when the whole compliance department is you.

One note before the practical part: this is general information about a court decision, not legal advice. For how the ruling applies to your brokerage specifically, consult a transportation attorney.

The exposure Montgomery confirmed is the same for everyone, but the experience of a negligent-selection suit is not. A large broker has in-house counsel, an established vetting bureaucracy, and the balance sheet to litigate a defensible case to the end. A 1–5 person brokerage typically has none of those — which changes the calculus in two concrete ways.

First, defense costs and time hit harder. Even a suit you would ultimately win consumes money and the attention of the same one or two people who cover loads. Second, that pressure is exactly what drives settlements: when fighting is expensive relative to your size, a weak documentation trail can push you toward settling a case a well-documented broker could have defended. The record you keep is, in a very real sense, your substitute for the legal department you don't have.

What you should not take from this is panic. Montgomery is fault-based — a plaintiff has to prove your selection conduct was unreasonable and that it contributed to the harm. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence (joined by Justice Alito) made the practical point directly: a broker who acts reasonably and selects a reputable carrier should be able to defend these suits. The ruling punishes the absence of a process, not the absence of a compliance team.

The Court deliberately prescribed no checklist. "Ordinary care" is judged case by case, which means the question a court will ask is: what did this broker actually do, and can they show it? That framing favors small shops more than it might seem, because the things that count as evidence — the FMCSA data you reviewed, the insurance you verified, the criteria you applied, the dated record of the decision — don't require staff. They require consistency.

The trap for a small broker is doing the checks but leaving no trail: you looked the carrier up, it looked fine, you covered the load. Two years later, in a deposition, "I always check" is close to worthless; a dated record of what you saw that day is an exhibit. The most consistent theme in post-Montgomery legal analysis is timing — demonstrate reasonable care contemporaneously with the hiring, not reconstructed later in litigation.

None of this requires new software or a consultant to start. It requires making four habits systematic — the same four that show up in every serious reading of what ordinary care looks like after Montgomery.

One subtlety worth knowing: a written process you don't follow can be worse than a modest process you follow every time, because the gap between your stated standard and your actual conduct is exactly what a plaintiff's lawyer will highlight. Pick a bar you can genuinely clear on every load — even at 9 p.m. on a Friday cover — and clear it every time. Consistency is what makes a small shop's process credible.

For the concrete contents of the file itself — what to capture, and the properties (contemporaneous, decision-specific, attributable, tamper-evident) that make it hold up — see our defensible carrier file checklist. And if you're brand new to brokering, the new-broker vetting checklist walks the same steps in first-load order.

We're building an interactive version of this workflow — one that runs the federal-record checks and keeps the dated trail for you automatically. Until then, two pieces are already free with no signup: the free carrier check covers the FMCSA-record portion in one pass, and the free COI reader checks a certificate's coverage against your minimums.