Authored by Patrick Bracher.
A lot has been said about the May 2026 US Supreme Court judgment suggesting that freight brokers might be liable under US State law for selecting unsafe motor carriers that get them into accidents that kill or injure people.
What the case actually deals with is a US-specific general pre-emption in the US Federal Aviation Administration Authorisation Act 1994 and the States’ authority to regulate road safety through their own statutes and tort law.
The case was about the question whether the exemption in the statute meant that the exemption should be interpreted to exclude brokers from statutory responsibility.
The court observed that sellers often used motor carriers to transport products to their destination. Finding a carrier can be time consuming, so many sellers rely on brokers to do it for them. Brokers are the transportation industry’s matchmakers, connecting sellers of goods to the carriers who move them.
While driving a truck loaded with plastic pots through Illinois, the driver veered off course and struck the claimant’s tractor trailer which was stopped at the side of the road. The claimant’s leg had to be amputated and he sustained other severe and permanent injuries from the collision. According to the evidence, the carrier chosen had a conditional safety rating and was deficient with respect to the qualification of its drivers, hours of service of drivers, inspection, repair and maintenance, its recordable crash rate and more. Based on that safety rating, the claimant alleged that the broker knew, (or should have known), that choosing that carrier to transport goods was reasonably likely to result in crashes that would injure others.
The court found only that the exclusion in the 1994 Act meant that the claimant’s claim for negligent-hiring against the broker was not precluded by the legislation. The court did not go into the merits of the case nor did it deal with the question whether such a claim was permissible on the facts.
In South Africa, like most common law jurisdictions absent statutory exemptions, on the rights facts a claim against a freight broker would be sustainable where the broker knows or should know that choosing the particular carrier was reasonably likely to result in crashes that would injure others. The US decision made new law regarding their statute but not regarding ordinary principles of negligence.
Montgomery v Caribe Transport II LLC, US Supreme Court No. 24-1238 (14 May 2026)