The first half of 2026 handed personal-injury practitioners two Supreme Court decisions pulling in opposite directions, a set of headline verdicts against the largest technology companies in the country, and a continued climb in trucking awards that insurers no longer pretend to control. Taken together, the six months reset several assumptions PI firms carried into the year. Here is what moved, and what it means for case selection in the back half.
The Court giveth: freight brokers lose their preemption shield
The plaintiff bar's biggest structural win came on May 14, when the Court decided Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC. A unanimous opinion by Justice Barrett held that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act does not preempt state negligent-selection claims against freight brokers, so long as the claim concerns motor-vehicle safety. The dispute arose from a highway crash involving a driver for a carrier that broker C.H. Robinson had selected.
For years the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits had thrown out these claims, reasoning that brokers do not operate vehicles and so fall outside the statute's safety exception. The Court rejected that narrow reading. Requiring a broker to use ordinary care in choosing a carrier, Barrett wrote, plainly concerns motor vehicles. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Alito, concurred while warning that the outcome was closer than the majority suggested and that Congress never built federal safety oversight of broker carrier-selection. Defense firms will mine that concurrence, but the holding stands: brokers are now defendants. Expect negligent-selection counts to become standard in commercial-trucking pleadings, and expect broker onboarding files to become routine discovery. We cover the mechanics in our trucking and motorcycle reporting.
The Court taketh: Roundup failure-to-warn claims narrow
One month later the Court cut the other way. On June 25, in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, a 7-2 majority held that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require a pesticide maker to add a cancer warning the EPA never mandated. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the opinion, reversing a $1.25 million verdict for a plaintiff who tied two decades of Roundup use to his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Justice Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Gorsuch.
The reasoning: federal law requires Monsanto to sell Roundup with the label the EPA approved, and the EPA has repeatedly concluded glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer, so a state jury cannot compel a contrary warning. The decision does not end the Roundup litigation, and it leaves design-defect and other theories intact, but it removes the failure-to-warn count that anchored many of these cases. Practitioners with glyphosate inventory should reassess theory of liability now. The broader lesson reaches every products case built on a warning claim against a federally regulated label: the preemption defense just got sharper teeth. Our product liability coverage breaks down where the surviving theories go from here.
The split between the two rulings is the practical headline. Durnell rewards defendants who can point to a federal agency's approved label, while Montgomery denies that shelter to intermediaries whose conduct sits outside any federal safety scheme. The dividing line is whether a federal regulator actually occupied the field. Where it did, preemption is stronger after this term; where it only deregulated economically, as with freight brokers, the state-law duty survives. Screen every preemption defense against that distinction rather than the older assumption that a federal statute in the vicinity ends the inquiry.
Big Tech in the crosshairs: the social media addiction verdicts
The verdict that dominated PI headlines came out of the social media adolescent-addiction litigation, where juries returned headline awards against Meta and Google over claims their platforms are engineered to hook young users and cause measurable harm. Law360's midyear report ranked the development among the year's most significant, and for good reason: it validates a product-liability framing of algorithmic design and opens a category of defendant with effectively unlimited resources.
The strategic read for PI firms is mixed. These are mass-tort cases with long horizons, heavy expert costs, and aggressive, well-funded defense. They are not a fit for firms without the capital to carry years of litigation. But the design-defect theory that carried the verdicts, that a product's engineered features and not just its warnings create the injury, travels well beyond social media. Firms evaluating mass-tort inventory should watch the appeals closely before committing intake dollars.
The verdicts also change settlement posture in the cases already filed. A defendant that watched a jury assign real numbers to algorithmic-design claims has a harder time treating the next bellwether as a nuisance. Plaintiff-side coordinating counsel will press that leverage, and firms with a stake in the coordinated proceedings should expect the negotiation window to open sooner than it would have a year ago.
Trucking verdicts keep climbing
Nuclear verdicts in trucking showed no sign of cooling. By early 2026 the median nuclear award in the sector had climbed past $44 million, and awards north of $100 million, the so-called thermonuclear tier, are now a recurring event rather than an outlier. A recent Utah verdict reached $81 million, and a Texas case approached $50 million against a closely held carrier.
The engine behind the numbers has not changed, but it has grown more refined. Plaintiff attorneys continue to reframe individual crashes as systemic public-safety failures, and the most effective version of that theme is built on the defendant's own conduct after the crash. Deleted dashcam footage, overwritten telematics, and a safety manual that gathers dust while dispatchers pressure drivers past their hours all feed a corporate-indifference narrative that juries punish. Combined with the new broker exposure from Montgomery, the trucking plaintiff now has more defendants and more pressure points than at any point in recent memory. Insurers have responded with tighter underwriting and louder calls for tort reform, a fight that will define the sector's back half.
Premises liability delivers a nine-figure Florida verdict
Premises cases rarely reach the top of the verdict charts, but an Orange County, Florida jury changed that when it returned roughly $644.75 million against the owners and operators of a Winter Park venue after a patron suffered catastrophic injuries in a fall down a staircase. Whatever survives post-trial motions and appeal, the award signals that jurors in the right venue will treat a preventable premises hazard as harshly as any vehicle or product case. It is a reminder that notice, constructive notice, and a defendant's maintenance history remain live sources of large-verdict exposure.
What it means for the back half of 2026
Three practical takeaways emerge from the midyear record. First, the defense-side preemption playbook is now uneven. Durnell strengthened it for federally labeled products, while Montgomery weakened it for freight brokers. Screen new files with that split in mind rather than assuming preemption runs one direction.
Second, design-defect theory is ascendant. From social media to consumer products, the cases getting to verdict increasingly argue that engineered features, not missing warnings, caused the harm. That framing sidesteps the warning-preemption problem Durnell created and lines up with where juries are willing to go.
Third, post-incident corporate conduct is doing more work than ever. Spoliation, indifference, and the paper-safety-program pattern are the through-line connecting the trucking verdicts, the tech cases, and the big premises award. Firms that document the defendant's behavior after the injury, not just the injury itself, are the ones posting the outsized numbers.
The common thread across a busy six months is expanded reach: more defendants, sharper design-defect theories, and juries increasingly willing to punish institutional conduct. For ongoing coverage of the verdicts and rulings reshaping the sector, follow our industry news desk.