Two federal developments this spring reshaped how commercial-trucking cases get built, and they landed close enough together that plaintiff and defense teams are still recalibrating. The first is the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, holding that the FAAAA does not preempt state negligent-selection claims against freight brokers. The second is quieter but arrives with a hard date attached: as of today, drivers still running two recently revoked electronic logging devices record no valid duty status.
The broker-liability door is open nationwide
Before this spring, broker liability turned on a circuit split. The Ninth and Sixth Circuits let negligent-selection claims proceed under the FAAAA's safety exception, while the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits read the preemption clause to bar them. The Court resolved that split in May 2026, holding that a claim faulting a broker for placing a load with an unsafe carrier is an exercise of the state's authority over motor vehicle safety and survives preemption.
The facts were familiar to anyone who works these files. A tractor-trailer operating for a carrier with a conditional safety rating struck the plaintiff, and the broker, C.H. Robinson, had arranged the load. The plaintiff argued the broker knew or should have known the carrier presented a heightened risk. That theory now proceeds in every circuit.
What the Court did not decide matters just as much. The vicarious-liability theory, that a broker exercises enough control over a carrier to answer for the carrier's torts under agency principles, was resolved below and never reached the Justices. Expect defense teams to press that distinction hard, and expect plaintiff teams to keep developing control-based theories in parallel with negligent selection.
What to plead and pull early
Negligent selection lives or dies on what the broker could see at the time of the tender. Build the record around it:
- The carrier's SAFER and SMS snapshots as they existed on the load date, not today's version, because they refresh and need immediate preservation.
- The broker's internal carrier-vetting policy and any monitoring service it subscribed to, then measure the tender against that policy.
- Conditional or unsatisfactory safety ratings, out-of-service percentages, and prior crash history the broker had access to.
- The contract and rate confirmation, which often reveal whether the broker retained any control over routing, timing, or equipment.
The chameleon-carrier problem, where a carrier reincarnates under a new DOT number to shed a bad record, makes the broker's diligence the only meaningful safety check in many of these chains. That is exactly the gap the negligent-selection theory is built to reach.
The ELD revocation trap
FMCSA has pulled more than two dozen electronic logging devices from its registered list since January. Two of them, Safe ELD and MYLOGS ELD, were removed on May 7, and the agency set today as the cutoff: a driver still using either device now records no valid duty status and can be placed out of service.
For litigation, a revoked ELD is a discovery opportunity. When the compliant data stream disappears, the carrier has to reconstruct hours of service from secondary sources, and every one of those sources is discoverable:
- Paper logs, fuel receipts, and dispatch records
- GPS pings and telematics from the tractor or the trailer
- Toll transponder data and weigh-station timestamps
- Cell-phone location and bill-of-lading times
When those sources conflict with whatever log the carrier produces, the inconsistency is the case. It goes to whether the driver was over hours, whether the carrier's safety systems were real or cosmetic, and whether a jury should hear about a pattern rather than an isolated lapse.
Spoliation letters still do the heavy lifting
Send the preservation letter before the engine control module data overwrites, which can happen within days. Name the specific artifacts: ECM and event-data-recorder downloads, ELD back-end records, the driver qualification file, dispatch and messaging logs, and any onboard camera footage. Tie the demand to the carrier's own retention duties under the safety regulations so a later spoliation motion has teeth. A revoked device does not excuse a carrier from producing the underlying duty-status evidence, and framing destruction of that evidence as a foreseeable-litigation problem is where the leverage sits.
Motorcycle cases: the comparative-fault overlay
The same discovery discipline applies when the plaintiff is on two wheels, but the fault fight looks different. Helmet-use defenses and lane-splitting allegations get raised reflexively, and their reach depends entirely on state law. In jurisdictions where helmet non-use is inadmissible on liability, keep it out and keep the jury on the truck's conduct. Where lane-splitting is lawful or unregulated, the mere fact of it is not negligence, and reconstruction evidence usually shows the larger vehicle failed to look.
Telematics and event-data-recorder output cut both ways here, so pull the motorcycle's data too where it exists and get ahead of the defense narrative rather than reacting to it at deposition.
The through-line
Both developments reward teams that move fast on preservation and ask who in the chain had information and chose not to act on it. Whether the target is a broker who tendered a load to a carrier it should have flagged or a motor carrier leaning on a device the government just delisted, the case is built from records that degrade quickly. For related coverage, see our reporting on commercial trucking and motorcycle litigation, the case law and settlements shaping these theories, and the damages framing in wrongful-death practice when a truck crash turns fatal.