Can a freight broker be sued for hiring an unsafe motor carrier in Georgia?

· 3 min read

A freight broker, the middleman that arranges to match a shipper’s load with a trucking company, can in some circumstances be sued when it selects a dangerous carrier that then causes a crash. The theory is negligent selection or negligent hiring of the carrier, though brokers raise defenses that make these claims more contested than ordinary carrier liability.

The broker’s potential duty of care

A broker does not drive the truck or own the equipment, so it is not automatically responsible the way the operating carrier is. The argument against a broker is that it had a duty to use reasonable care in choosing a motor carrier and breached that duty by hiring one it knew or should have known was unsafe. Information about a carrier’s safety record, including federal safety ratings and inspection and crash history, is often available, and a broker that ignored clear red flags and entrusted freight to a carrier with a poor safety profile may be exposed to a negligent-selection claim.

To succeed, an injured person generally must connect the broker’s selection to the harm, showing the carrier’s unfitness was discoverable and that this unfitness contributed to the crash.

The federal preemption defense, now resolved

For years, brokers defeated many of these claims by arguing federal preemption. The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act bars states from enforcing laws related to a broker’s “price, route, or service,” and brokers argued that negligent-selection claims fell within that bar. The statute also contains a safety exception preserving a state’s authority over safety with respect to motor vehicles, and the federal appellate courts had split over whether that exception saved negligent-selection claims. The Eleventh Circuit, whose decisions govern Georgia’s federal courts, had held in Aspen American Insurance Co. v. Landstar Ranger, Inc. (2023) that such claims were preempted and not rescued by the safety exception.

That landscape changed. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC (2026), a unanimous Supreme Court held that the safety exception preserves state negligent-hiring claims against brokers, so the Act does not preempt them. A broker can no longer escape a negligent-selection claim on preemption grounds alone, though it may still contest whether it actually breached its duty of care.

Practical considerations

  • The available safety data the broker could have checked is central to the negligence theory.
  • Whether the entity is truly a broker, a carrier, or both can change the analysis, because a party acting as a carrier faces the fuller liability that operating carriers do.
  • The former preemption defense no longer bars these claims after the 2026 Supreme Court ruling, so the fight now centers on whether the broker actually used reasonable care.

The bottom line

A freight broker can be sued in Georgia for negligently selecting an unsafe motor carrier. The federal preemption defense that once stalled many of these claims was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2026, leaving the dispute focused on the merits. Success tends to hinge on what the broker could have learned about the carrier’s safety record and whether it ignored discoverable warning signs when entrusting the load.

This article is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and Georgia law may change. For advice about a specific situation, consult a licensed Georgia personal injury attorney.

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