BUILD America 250 Act and the Fong Amendment
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the BUILD America 250 Act (H.R. 8870) on May 22, 2026, with a Fong (R-CA) amendment that would restructure how plaintiffs can sue Uber, Lyft, and similar app-based companies under federal law. The amendment would establish rideshare federal preemption of state vicarious-liability, non-delegable-duty, and common-carrier doctrines that plaintiff counsel have used as the primary vehicle for obtaining large verdicts against rideshare companies.
Under the amendment's framework, a plaintiff who sustains injuries in a rideshare-related crash or assault could no longer rely on agency theories or common-carrier duties recognized under state tort law. Liability against the platform company would require proof of gross negligence or criminal wrongdoing at the corporate level, a threshold that effectively insulates Uber and Lyft from negligent-hiring, negligent-retention, and respondeat-superior claims that have formed the backbone of successful PI cases.
The timing is notable. A second federal jury found Uber liable for a driver's sexual assault shortly before the amendment was introduced. The bill still requires a House floor vote and Senate passage, but the committee approval signals that the app-based transportation industry's lobbying efforts have produced a viable legislative path toward immunity.
Counsel handling active rideshare cases should audit which claims depend entirely on state doctrines the Fong amendment would eliminate and evaluate trial-scheduling timelines against H.R. 8870's legislative calendar.
California SB 371 Has Already Reduced UM/UIM Passenger Recovery by 94 Percent
Effective January 1, 2026, California's SB 371 (signed by Gov. Newsom on October 3, 2025) restructured the insurance obligations rideshare companies must carry during an active trip. The per-person UM/UIM limit during the on-trip period dropped from $1 million to $60,000, a 94 percent reduction. Per-accident UM/UIM coverage dropped from $1 million to $300,000.
Third-party liability coverage when the rideshare driver is the at-fault party remains at $1 million per accident, meaning claims against negligent drivers in traditional injury scenarios are less affected. The structural damage lands most squarely on passengers injured by third parties while riding in an Uber or Lyft vehicle, and on underinsured plaintiffs whose primary avenue of recovery was the UM/UIM stack.
For firms doing volume rideshare plaintiff work in California, the practical consequence is that cases previously resolved with meaningful UM/UIM components now require more aggressive pursuit of direct-liability theories against the platform itself. That is precisely the litigation posture the Fong amendment would eliminate at the federal level.
Medical providers evaluating rideshare-injury liens in California should recalibrate recovery expectations on cases where the injured party was a passenger and the at-fault driver carried no personal insurance or was underinsured. The $60,000 per-person UM/UIM ceiling materially compresses the pool from which liens can be satisfied.
California rideshare cases with injuries occurring after January 1, 2026 require a coverage analysis that begins at $60,000 UM/UIM per person rather than the prior $1 million baseline.
Two NHTSA Recalls Create Crashworthiness Exposure Across Nearly 1.5 Million Vehicles
NHTSA Recall 26V344 covers 419,967 Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs manufactured between model years 2018 and 2022. The defect involves front seat belt pretensioners that may lock inadvertently due to propellant degradation and squib-pin corrosion, preventing the belt from restraining an occupant during a crash. Ford has acknowledged one injury. Dealer notification began June 8, 2026, and the remedy (inspection and retractor replacement) is not anticipated until August 2026, leaving affected vehicles on the road without a fix through at least the end of summer.
A separate June 2026 Stellantis recall covers 1,076,999 Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator vehicles for a faulty electrical connection in the power steering pump wiring that creates a fire risk. NHTSA has linked the defect to 51 fires and 1 confirmed injury across the recall population.
For counsel evaluating crashworthiness claims, the Ford recall presents a seat-belt-effectiveness scenario: if a client sustained unrestrained-occupant injuries in a 2018-2022 Expedition or Navigator, the pretensioner defect warrants investigation before the remedy is deployed. The Stellantis recall raises fire and loss-of-steering exposure across a population large enough to expect additional plaintiffs in coming months.
Counsel screening auto intake cases involving 2018-2022 Ford Expeditions or Navigators, or any Jeep Wrangler or Gladiator, should add NHTSA recall status to the standard case evaluation checklist before accepting retention.
FMCSA Overhaul Creates New Discovery Angles in Commercial Trucking Cases
Two FMCSA regulatory changes taking effect through early 2026 alter the discovery calculus for plaintiff counsel in commercial-trucking PI cases.
The Safety Measurement System overhaul consolidated more than 950 violation categories into approximately 116 peer-compared buckets, with heavier weighting assigned to recent violations. For plaintiff attorneys, the SMS database is a foundational pre-suit tool for establishing carrier-negligence baselines. The rebuilt scoring system peer-compares carriers against similarly sized fleets, which means SMS printouts pulled before the overhaul may no longer accurately reflect how a carrier scores under current methodology.
The CDL Integrity Rule, effective March 16, 2026 and formally titled 'Restoring Integrity to the Issuance of Non-Domiciled Commercial Drivers Licenses,' tightens standards for who qualifies to hold a CDL. This creates a negligent-entrustment angle when the defendant carrier employed a driver holding an improperly issued or non-domiciled CDL that would not have satisfied the rule. Pre-suit records requests should now include CDL issuance documentation and the driver's state of domicile at time of licensure.
Pre-suit discovery in commercial trucking cases should incorporate updated SMS queries under the new peer-bucket methodology and request CDL issuance records as a standard entrustment checkpoint.
Telematics Preservation: The Window Is Hours, Not Days
Federal courts now widely admit event data recorder and engine control module data from commercial trucks. Pre-crash speed, braking patterns, throttle input, and steering data are regularly introduced as evidence in liability cases, and authenticity arguments against this evidence have been largely resolved in plaintiff's favor. The practical problem is the data retention window.
Carrier telematics platforms may overwrite crash-relevant data within 90 to 365 days absent a litigation hold. More aggressive platforms overwrite within weeks. Preservation letters must go out within hours of a crash, not after the initial intake interview. Counsel receiving a referral of a serious commercial trucking case should have a preservation demand directed to the carrier before end of business the same day.
FRCP 37(e) provides a meaningful tool when carriers fail to preserve electronically stored information: adverse-inference instructions for negligent failure to preserve, or default judgment where a court finds intentional spoliation. Courts have granted both remedies in trucking cases involving deleted telematics data, but the adverse-inference posture requires plaintiff counsel to demonstrate the carrier was on notice of potential litigation, which is exactly what a timely preservation demand establishes on the record.
Firms without a same-day preservation protocol for referred commercial trucking cases are accepting avoidable spoliation risk on evidence that federal courts regularly admit and juries can evaluate directly.
The Floor Vote: 275-Plus State Legislators on Record Against the Fong Amendment
The Congressional Democratic Women's Caucus and Rep. Emilia Sykes sent a letter to Speaker Johnson on June 10, 2026, calling for the Fong amendment's removal from H.R. 8870. A parallel opposition letter organized by Colorado Rep. Willford and signed by more than 275 state legislators was submitted around the same period, putting the plaintiff-bar and consumer-advocate coalition on the record ahead of the floor vote.
The opposition argues that rideshare federal preemption strips states of longstanding tort authority without a compensating federal remedy. The floor vote will be the decisive moment: if H.R. 8870 advances to the Senate with the Fong amendment intact, the window for removal narrows considerably.
For plaintiff-side firms, the practical posture is dual-track: continue pursuing all available state-law theories while monitoring the House floor schedule. Cases pending on common-carrier or non-delegable-duty theories carry statutory-risk exposure that did not exist eighteen months ago.
With 275-plus state legislators on record in opposition and the House floor vote count not yet settled, the Fong amendment's fate is the single most consequential open variable for rideshare plaintiff litigation in the second half of 2026.