SCOTUS: Injured trucker’s negligent-hiring claim not preempted

Federal transportation law does not preempt a negligent-hiring claim brought by a truck driver who sustained severe and permanent injuries when his parked tractor-trailer was struck by a truck transporting a shipment under a contract arranged by a third-party broker, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act preempts state laws related to the prices, routes and services of the trucking industry. The FAAAA includes an exception under 49 U.S.C. §14501(c)(2)(A), which provides the act’s preemption provision “shall not restrict the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.”

The plaintiff in the case, Shawn Montgomery, sustained severe and permanent injuries when his tractor trailer, which he had parked on the side of the road, was struck by a truck driven by Yosniel Varela-Mojena. At the time, Varela-Mojena was driving a load of plastic pots through Illinois for motor carrier Caribe Transport II, LLC. Transportation broker C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. had coordinated the shipment of plastic pots.

Montgomery brought personal injury claims in federal court against Varela-Mojena, Caribe Transport and C.H. Robinson. In suing C.H. Robinson, the plaintiff alleged the broker was negligent in hiring Varela-Mojena and Caribe Transport because the broker knew or should have known from Caribe Transport’s safety rating that hiring it to transport goods was reasonably likely to result in crashes that would injure others.

A federal judge in Illinois granted C.H. Robinson’s motion for summary judgment, concluding the FAAAA expressly preempted Montgomery’s negligent-hiring

claim. In addition, the judge ruled that his claim did not fall within the FAAAA’s safety exception.

After a panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, the Supreme Court granted Montogomery’s petition for certiorari to resolve a circuit split as to whether the FAAAA’s safety exception permits negligent-hiring claims against brokers that coordinate shipments in the transportation industry.

The Supreme Court held that a claim that a company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted by the FAAAA, given that states retain the authority under the act to regulate safety “with respect to motor vehicles.”

Click here to read the full text of the Supreme Court’s May 14 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC.

TO THE POINT: “C.H. Robinson and the United States contend that construing the safety exception as Montgomery requests would swallow the FAAAA’s express preemption provision whole. In other words, everything that Congress preempted would also qualify for the safety exception. Not so. Recall that the express preemption provision applies to laws and regulations ‘related to a price, route, or service of’ motor carriers or brokers ‘with respect to the transportation of property.’ The safety exception saves only a subset of preempted claims: those involving regulations concerning motor vehicle safety. One can imagine many state laws that are related to motor carrier prices, routes, and services — such as how much a carrier may charge or which highways it may traverse —that have no relationship to safety.”

— Justice Amy Coney Barrett, opinion of the court

“As I see it, the conflicting contextual considerations make this a close case as we determine how to construe and where to draw the line on the statutory phrase ‘with respect to motor vehicles.’ In the end, I do not believe that Congress, through such oblique language in an economic-deregulation statute, simultaneously (i) allowed state tort suits against negligent trucking companies and (ii) categorically preempted state tort suits against upstream brokers who negligently select an unsafe trucking company. The brokers and their amici raise serious concerns about the repercussions of state tort liability against brokers, and they may of course (among other possibilities) ask Congress and the President to change federal law. But as of now, federal law does not preempt state tort liability against brokers for negligent selection of trucking companies.”

— Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., concurring