The US Supreme Court is set to decide whether to hear two key cases that could clarify whether freight brokers can be held liable under the F4A’s safety exception. Lower courts are split on whether brokers qualify as “motor vehicles” under the law, with recent rulings in Fuelling vs. Echo Global and Casarez vs. Irigoyen Farms challenging the broad liability protections brokers typically receive. A decision on whether the Court will take up Montgomery vs. Caribe II or Cox vs. TQL is expected by October 6, potentially reshaping broker liability nationwide. They write:
Even as two broker liability cases are sitting before the Supreme Court, with the nine justices scheduled to discuss Monday whether to take them up and settle conflicting lower court precedents, there are other cases decided in recent months that are filling up a landscape of precedents.
One of the cases bubbling under the more widely-known rulings is in federal court, Fuelling vs. Echo Global Logistics. James Fuelling was killed in a January 2022 crash with a truck that had been booked by Echo Global.
The second case is in a California state court. The biggest name among the plaintiffs and defendants in that latter action is Walmart, but the case is known as Casarez vs. Irigoyen Farms. […]
The fundamental issue before the Supreme Court is the safety exception under F4A.
The 1994 F4A federal law preempts state actions that can impact a transportation “price, route or service.” But the safety exception allows state action against a transportation company for behaviors that might be considered negligent and cause physical harm, regardless of any impact on a price, route or service. […]
There had been a case before the Fifth Circuit, Crane vs. Liberty Lane, where a lower court had ruled in favor of broker Penske Transportation Management in its request to be severed from the case on the grounds of F4A preemption. But the Fifth Circuit declined to take up the appeal.
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