u/Armchair-Attorney

In light of Montgomery, this is the question everyone is asking. Same goes for what is a reasonable vetting process. Only answer is litigation.

With liability beyond!

I made this comment elsewhere, but I wanted to reshare a ms a post.

Of course I need to be on the road when SCOTUS drops Montgomery! There are a lot of opinions about the ruling, and I have some thoughts as a board my flight home.

What you see here is an excerpt from the concurrence by Justice Kavanaugh. He says, “[F4A] does not preempt state tort suits against brokers who negligently arrange truck transportation with an unsafe carrier.”

Two big questions: what is negligent arrangement and what is an unsafe carrier?

Let’s start with the second question first. What is an unsafe carrier? Is it a safety score with the FMCSA? Probably not. Why? Because 94% of carriers don’t have a safety score with the FMCSA. So what is it then? Practically speaking, an unsafe carrier is the one that is an accident. Put another way, we don’t know you’re unsafe until after the event.

Ok. What is negligently arranging? It’s a duty to use reasonable care to select a motor carrier. Can you rely on government data alone? Obviously not. Is it using the myriad of vetting technologies like Highway or GenLogs? Is it getting trade references? We don’t know. Not yet anyway. We need more lawsuits to establish the standard.

Is this a case big? Absolutely. SCOTUS doesn’t take cases unless they have profound implications to the country. We just don’t know yet how big the impact will be. But brokers are playing the same game with new rules. Time will tell.

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...for commercial vehicles is pretty depressing. Gear up, May 12-May 14 will be here before you know it!

Nothing quite like watching our twins holding hands and running down the path! It goes quick!!