Can You Sue the Freight Broker After a Truck Crash?

Most people assume that when a truck crash happens, the driver or the trucking company is the only one who answers for it.

That’s rarely the whole story.

Somewhere behind that truck is often a freight broker, the company that matched a shipper’s cargo with the carrier that hauled it. Brokers don’t own trucks. They don’t hire drivers. But they do pick which carrier gets the job, and that choice matters.

If the broker in your case picked a carrier it knew, or should have known, was unsafe, we may have a claim against that broker too, separate from any claim against the truck driver or trucking company.

This article provides general legal information about Illinois and federal law; consult a licensed Illinois attorney for advice specific to your situation.

What Is a Freight Broker and How Are They Involved in Truck Accidents?

A freight broker is a licensed middleman. Federal rules under 49 CFR Part 371 govern how brokers operate. Their job is to connect a shipper who needs cargo moved with a carrier willing to move it, then take a fee for making the match.

The broker doesn’t own the truck. In most cases, the broker doesn’t employ the driver either. What the broker does own is the decision: which carrier gets the load.

That decision carries weight. A broker who hires a carrier with a bad safety record, suspended operating authority, or no real insurance is putting a dangerous truck on the highway, and everyone driving near it is exposed to that risk.

Federal rules require brokers to check a carrier’s safety history before dispatching a load. In our experience handling these cases, that check doesn’t always happen the way it should.

The Legal Barrier That Protected Brokers, Until 2026

For years, brokers had a reliable way to get these lawsuits thrown out before trial: a federal law called the FAAAA, the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (49 U.S.C. § 14501(c)). It blocks states from enforcing laws “related to a price, route, or service” of a broker, and brokers argued that covered negligence claims too.

Federal courts split on the question. Some said a negligence claim against a broker was preempted and had to be dismissed before the victim ever got a hearing on the merits. Others let the claim go forward. Illinois sits in the Seventh Circuit, and our federal courts here had been siding with the brokers.

Sit with that for a second. Whether a victim could even get in front of a jury depended less on what the broker actually did and more on which courthouse the case happened to land in.

The 2026 Supreme Court Ruling: Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II LLC

The Supreme Court settled the question this year, unanimously, in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II LLC. The Court held that a state-law negligent selection or negligent entrustment claim against a freight broker is not preempted by the FAAAA.

Here’s what that means in plain terms: if a broker carelessly picked an unsafe carrier and that carrier caused your crash, you can sue the broker in state court. The broker no longer gets to short-circuit the case with a preemption motion before you’ve had a chance to make your argument.

A 9-0 vote is worth pausing on. It tells you the Court didn’t see this as a close call, even though brokers had been winning this argument in courts like ours for years.

The reasoning matters too. The Court treated a broker’s duty to pick a safe carrier as an ordinary safety rule, the same kind of rule that applies to anyone whose decisions put trucks on the road, not some special regulation aimed at how brokers run their business. That’s why it survives the FAAAA.

And because this is a Supreme Court ruling, it applies everywhere. Illinois plaintiffs now stand on the same ground as plaintiffs in the circuits that had already rejected the broker’s preemption argument.

What Brokers Are Required to Do and What They Often Skip

Federal rules under 49 CFR Part 371 require brokers to keep records on the carriers they use, including operating authority and proof of insurance. None of this information is hidden. The FMCSA runs a public database called SAFER (safer.fmcsa.dot.gov), and anyone, broker or otherwise, can look up a carrier’s safety rating, inspection history, crash record, and whether its operating authority is even active.

So when a broker sends a load to a carrier with a conditional or unsatisfactory safety rating, a stack of hours-of-service violations, or insurance that lapsed months ago, the warning signs were sitting right there in a public database. That’s the gap negligent entrustment law is built to address: not bad luck, but a choice made without bothering to look.

After Montgomery, a broker can’t wave that away with a preemption motion. It has to answer for the choice in court.

Who is liable in a truck accident is rarely a one-name answer. Liability can reach the driver, the trucking company, the broker, the shipper, the loader, or a maintenance contractor. Each of them may carry its own separate insurance policy, which is exactly why we look at all of them before deciding who to name in a claim.

Building a Freight Broker Liability Claim in Illinois

To win a negligent selection claim against a broker, we generally have to prove four things: the broker owed a duty of care when choosing a carrier, the broker breached that duty by picking an unsafe one without real vetting, the unsafe carrier caused the crash, and the crash caused your injuries and losses.

None of that gets proven with an argument alone. We build it with the broker’s internal vetting records, the carrier’s FMCSA safety rating at the time of dispatch, the carrier’s crash history pulled from SAFER, and the broker-carrier contract itself.

Illinois courts ask a simple question: what would a reasonably careful broker have done? A broker that never bothered to check a carrier’s safety record before loading it up with 40 tons of cargo and sending it down the highway is going to have a hard time arguing it acted reasonably.

Why the Broker’s Identity Matters Quickly After a Crash

You won’t find the broker’s name painted on the side of the truck. The name on the door belongs to the carrier, and the broker’s involvement usually only shows up in the paperwork behind the scenes: the bill of lading, the carrier’s dispatch records, the load confirmation.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Dispatch systems are electronic, and electronic records get overwritten or deleted, sometimes as routine business practice and sometimes on purpose. We send a preservation letter fast for exactly this reason.

Illinois gives you two years to file a personal injury claim under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. That sounds like plenty of time, and for filing the lawsuit, it is. But the records that prove a broker’s negligence don’t wait two years. Brokers aren’t required to keep vetting and dispatch records forever, and a carrier that just caused a crash has every reason to lose the paperwork showing who hired it and why.

Negligent Selection vs. Negligent Entrustment: Two Related but Different Theories

These two labels get used almost interchangeably, but they’re not identical claims, and the difference can matter for how we build your case.

A negligent selection claim focuses on the broker’s own process: did it have a reasonable system for vetting carriers, and did it follow that system before dispatching this particular load? A negligent entrustment claim asks a narrower question: did the broker actually know, or have reason to know, that this specific carrier was unfit, and hand over the load anyway?

In practice, the two overlap. A broker that skipped its own vetting process entirely is vulnerable on both theories. A broker that ran a check but missed an obvious red flag is more exposed on negligent selection. A broker that saw the red flag and dispatched the load anyway is exposed on both, and that’s the strongest version of the claim. Montgomery cleared the FAAAA obstacle for both theories, so which one fits your facts is a question we work out once we’ve pulled the broker’s actual records, not something to guess at in advance.

Insurance Coverage When a Broker Is Liable

A broker’s insurance picture looks nothing like a trucking company’s, and that surprises a lot of people.

Brokers don’t carry the same commercial auto liability policy a carrier does, because a broker doesn’t operate trucks. What a licensed broker is required to maintain is a surety bond or trust fund, filed with FMCSA as a BMC-84 or BMC-85, currently set at a $75,000 minimum. That bond exists to protect shippers and carriers in payment disputes. It was never designed to cover a catastrophic injury claim, and $75,000 disappears fast in a serious truck-crash case.

That’s why a broker’s own commercial general liability policy, and any errors-and-omissions coverage it carries for its brokerage operations, matters more than the bond once a negligent-selection claim is on the table. Some brokers carry meaningful CGL limits. Others carry close to nothing beyond the bond and are betting that no one ever looks past the carrier. Part of what we do early in a broker-liability case is find out which kind of broker we’re dealing with, because that affects both the strategy and what a case is realistically worth.

Red Flags a Careful Broker Should Have Caught

Not every broker-negligence case turns on the same fact pattern, but a few warning signs show up again and again in the carrier vetting records we’ve reviewed:

• A “new entrant” carrier operating under FMCSA’s provisional new-entrant safety monitoring program, which by definition hasn’t yet completed its full initial safety audit.
• An out-of-service rate for the carrier’s vehicles or drivers well above the national average in FMCSA’s CSA data, a strong signal of ongoing maintenance or hours-of-service problems.
• A conditional or unsatisfactory safety rating at the time of dispatch, rather than satisfactory.
• Insurance that had lapsed, or was set to lapse, according to the carrier’s own FMCSA filings.
• A pattern of recent crashes visible in the carrier’s SAFER crash history, especially crashes coded as preventable.

None of this requires a broker to hire a private investigator. Everything on this list is either in the carrier’s own FMCSA filings or in a public database the broker was supposed to check before the load ever left the dock. That’s the whole point of a negligent-selection claim: the information existed, and it wasn’t hard to find.

A Hypothetical Illustration

Here’s an illustrative example of how a case like this can come together, not a description of any real client’s outcome. A broker dispatches a load to a carrier whose FMCSA record shows a conditional safety rating and two hours-of-service violations in the prior six months. The broker’s own file shows no documented safety check before the dispatch. That carrier’s driver, fatigued and behind on his hours, rear-ends a passenger vehicle on I-55. In that scenario, the carrier is liable for the crash itself, and the broker’s own dispatch file becomes the evidence for a separate negligent-selection claim against the broker, because the information that should have stopped this dispatch was sitting in a database the broker never opened.

When the Broker and Carrier Are Both Liable

A broker-negligence claim doesn’t replace a claim against the driver and carrier. It sits alongside it. When more than one defendant contributes to causing your injuries, Illinois’s joint-and-several liability rule under 735 ILCS 5/2-1117 controls how responsibility is divided among them, and it can affect which defendant’s insurance actually ends up paying if one defendant is judgment-proof or underinsured. Naming the broker isn’t about picking one villain over another; it’s about making sure every party whose decisions contributed to the crash is part of the case, so a thin insurance policy on the carrier’s side doesn’t leave you undercompensated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Montgomery apply if my crash happened before the ruling?
Generally yes for cases that hadn’t already been finally decided. Judicial rulings on what a federal statute means typically apply to pending and future cases, not just crashes that happen going forward. Whether it applies to your specific situation is worth a direct conversation, since procedural timing can vary case to case.

What if the load was arranged by more than one broker, in a double-brokering situation?
It happens more than people realize, and it complicates the vetting question because now there are two brokers who may each bear some responsibility for who ultimately got the load. This is exactly the kind of fact pattern where the paperwork trail, not assumptions, decides who’s exposed.

Can I sue the broker if the carrier already settled or went out of business?
Yes. A broker’s liability for its own negligent selection is separate from the carrier’s liability for causing the crash. A carrier going out of business or reaching its own settlement doesn’t erase a valid claim against the broker.

How do I even find out which broker was involved?
Usually through the carrier’s own paperwork: the bill of lading, load confirmation, and dispatch records typically name the broker. This is one of the reasons an early preservation letter matters, since that paperwork is exactly what can go missing if nobody asks for it quickly.

Does it cost more to add a broker-liability claim to my case?
No. We handle these cases on contingency, meaning there’s no upfront cost to investigate whether a broker played a role, and no fee unless we recover for you.

What records do you actually need from the broker to prove this?
The broker’s carrier-vetting file, its dispatch and load-confirmation records for this specific shipment, its written safety-vetting policy if one exists, and its communications with the carrier around the time of dispatch. If the broker won’t produce these voluntarily, a subpoena in litigation compels production, which is one more reason getting a lawsuit filed within the two-year window matters even when settlement talks are still ongoing.

Does the broker have to be based in Illinois for me to sue here?
No. Illinois courts can typically exercise jurisdiction over an out-of-state broker if the broker’s actions, like dispatching the load that caused a crash on an Illinois highway, connect it to this state. Most freight brokers operate nationally and are used to being sued in the states where their dispatched loads cause harm.

Talk to a Chicago Truck Accident Lawyer for a Free Consultation

Freight broker liability is still a developing area of law, and it just shifted significantly. The Montgomery ruling opened a courthouse door that had been shut for a lot of victims who had a real grievance against a broker but no way to get their case heard.

If you or someone in your family was hurt in a truck crash in Illinois, it’s worth finding out whether a broker’s carrier selection played a role. We can look into that for you.

Phillips Law Offices offers free consultations for truck accident victims in the Chicago area. Call (312) 346-4262 or visit our free consultation page to speak with a truck accident attorney about your situation.

This article has been prepared for general informational purposes and is subject to attorney review. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.