Maryland Trucking Accident Lawyer Blog
Last updated August 21, 2026 · Reviewed by Jack D. Lebowitz
A serious truck crash on I-95 or the Baltimore Beltway often produces a defendant who cannot pay for the harm done. The motor carrier turns out to be a small operation with minimum coverage, and the damages run past those limits within the first month of hospital care. For years, the company that hired that carrier and put it on the road could usually get itself dismissed by pointing to a federal statute.
The Supreme Court removed that defense in May 2026. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24–1238, decided May 14, a unanimous Court held that federal law does not bar state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers. Justice Barrett wrote that requiring a broker to use ordinary care in choosing a carrier “concerns” motor vehicles, which places such claims inside the safety exception Congress built into the preemption statute.
For a Maryland family, the practical consequence is straightforward. In a Maryland trucking accident claim where the carrier’s policy will not cover the losses, the broker that selected that carrier is now a defendant the case can reach, and Lebowitz & Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers has been building these claims around the full chain of hiring decisions rather than the driver alone.
What a Freight Broker Does Before the Truck Ever Moves
A freight broker is a company that arranges transportation for a shipper without hauling anything itself, hiring a motor carrier to move the load and taking a margin on the arrangement.
That arrangement is where the selection happens. Brokers can see a carrier’s federal safety rating, its inspection and crash history, and its record on driver qualification, hours of service, and maintenance. A broker choosing between carriers is choosing which driver and which truck end up on the road, which is why the negligent hiring theory attaches at that point rather than at the moment of impact.
The Preemption Defense the Supreme Court Rejected
The statute at the center of the case is 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c). It bars states from enforcing any law “related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier,” and brokers had argued for years that a negligent hiring verdict does exactly that by regulating how they choose carriers.
The same subsection carries an exception preserving “the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” The Court read the exception to cover these claims, and the split among the lower courts that had divided over the question for a decade closed with it. Nothing in the ruling creates a new cause of action. It removes the argument that ended these cases before the facts were ever examined.
What a Negligent Hiring Claim Against a Broker Has to Show
The claim is ordinary Maryland negligence law applied to a hiring decision, so the evidence tends to come from the broker’s own files rather than from the crash scene. The records that carry the most weight are these:
- Safety rating: the carrier’s federal rating at the time of the load, including any conditional rating
- Inspection history: the out-of-service record, which is public and which brokers routinely check
- Vetting standards: the broker’s own written criteria, and whether this carrier met them
- Prior notice: what the broker knew about earlier crashes, driver qualification failures, or hours-of-service violations
Maryland’s contributory negligence rule applies to these claims as it does to every fault-based case in the state, which means an injured person found even slightly at fault can be barred from recovering at all. Adding a broker does not soften that rule, and it makes early preservation of the driver’s logs, the carrier’s files, and the broker’s load records more important rather than less. If a carrier’s insurer has already told you its limits are exhausted, the broker’s file is usually where your case goes next. The limitations period for most Maryland personal injury claims runs three years from the date the action accrues under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101, and where a crash was fatal, a Maryland wrongful death claim carries its own three-year period measured from the death.
Truck cases have always involved more parties than a car crash, and the work of finding every responsible one is what decides whether a family is made whole or left with a judgment against a company with no assets. We send preservation demands early, before logs and telematics data cycle out of a carrier’s system, and we look past the driver to the carrier, the shipper, and now the broker. Our attorneys have handled these multi-defendant cases across Maryland for years, and the ruling described here widens what is available in a real way.
Talk With a Truck Crash Attorney About Who Else Is Liable
Identifying every responsible party takes records a family has no practical way to obtain on its own. Trucking cases across Maryland, including Baltimore City, Prince George’s County, and the I-95 and I-270 corridors, are handled by Lebowitz & Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers. A free consultation is available at (800) 654-1949 or through the firm’s contact page. Fees come out of a recovery, and there are none without one.