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Less than three months after the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has provided an early look at how litigation may play out in the post-Montgomery era.
In Crane v. Penske Transportation Management, L.L.C., No. 25-40012 (5th Cir. Aug. 4, 2026), the Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment in favor of two Penske entities in a wrongful-death action arising from a fatal tractor-trailer collision. Most significantly for freight brokers and their insurers, the court reinstated a negligent-selection claim against Penske Transportation Management (“PTM”) in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC.
The underlying accident occurred while truck driver Satnam Singh Lehal was traveling to Laredo, Texas, to pick up cargo for Adient US. According to the Fifth Circuit, Lehal lost control of his tractor-trailer, causing it to jackknife, cross into oncoming traffic, and strike a vehicle driven by Lyndon Dean Meyer, killing Meyer.
The transportation chain involved several entities. Adient initially retained Penske Logistics to transport its goods. The shipment was then outsourced through PTM to Liberty Lane, which used an affiliated broker to retain OK Trans. OK Trans supplied the truck and employed Lehal. Meyer’s surviving family members ultimately alleged, among other things, that PTM was negligent in selecting Liberty Lane to transport the shipment.
The district court granted summary judgment in PTM’s favor, finding that the claim was preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (“FAAAA”). At the time, that conclusion was consistent with existing Fifth Circuit precedent. The legal landscape, however, changed while Crane was pending on appeal.
Negligent Selection After Montgomery
In May, the Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, holding that the FAAAA does not preempt a state-law negligent-selection claim against a freight broker arising from its selection of a motor carrier. The Court concluded that the FAAAA’s safety exception permits such claims to proceed when they concern a broker’s selection of a motor carrier to transport goods.
That holding removed what had become a significant threshold defense for freight brokers. Before Montgomery, brokers could often seek dismissal of negligent-selection claims without litigating the underlying merits, arguing instead that federal law preempted the claims altogether. After Montgomery, that avenue has been substantially narrowed. The focus now shifts to the state-law elements of the claim, including duty, breach, and causation, as well as the evidence surrounding the broker’s carrier-selection process.
Crane demonstrates that shift in practice.
Because the district court had dismissed the negligent-selection claim on preemption grounds, the Fifth Circuit recognized that Montgomery eliminated the basis for that ruling. PTM nevertheless argued that summary judgment should be affirmed because it owed no duty to the plaintiffs under Texas law. The Fifth Circuit declined to resolve that issue because the district court had not addressed it. Instead, the court reversed the judgment and remanded the negligent-selection claim to the district court for further proceedings.
That distinction is important. The Fifth Circuit did not find that PTM negligently selected Liberty Lane. Nor did it decide whether PTM owed a duty to the plaintiffs under Texas law or whether any action or omission by PTM contributed to the accident. Those issues remain unresolved.
Carrier Selection Under Greater Scrutiny
What Crane does show is that litigation is now moving beyond the federal preemption question. In the post-Montgomery environment, brokers should expect more cases to proceed into discovery focused on how motor carriers are evaluated, selected, approved, and monitored.
That discovery is likely to focus heavily on the information available to the broker at the time a carrier was selected. Plaintiffs may seek the carrier’s safety history, FMCSA data, inspection records, crash history, insurance information, internal ratings, prior experience with the carrier, and other information considered during the selection process. They are also likely to seek the broker’s written qualification criteria and evidence demonstrating whether those criteria were followed in the transaction at issue.
The practical challenge for brokers is that an accident may occur years before a negligent-selection claim is ultimately litigated. A company may have conducted an entirely reasonable review based on the information available at the time, but proving that review becomes more difficult if it cannot reconstruct what information its employees actually considered when the carrier was approved or selected.
Current FMCSA information is not necessarily a substitute. A carrier’s safety profile can change significantly over time. If the relevant question is whether a broker acted reasonably when selecting a carrier in 2023, a report generated in 2026 may not establish what the broker knew or reasonably could have known three years earlier. Brokers should therefore consider whether their systems preserve a meaningful snapshot of the information relied upon at the time of selection.
Crane also illustrates the complications that can arise when freight passes through multiple entities. The broker accused of negligent selection did not directly select the motor carrier that employed the driver involved in the accident. PTM selected Liberty Lane, and another brokerage relationship followed before OK Trans and Lehal ultimately became involved. Nevertheless, the negligent-selection claim against PTM survived the appeal.
The Fifth Circuit separately revived a statutory-employer theory against Penske Logistics under the federal motor carrier leasing regulations. The court concluded that Penske Logistics could potentially qualify as the driver’s statutory employer even though there was no direct agreement between Penske Logistics and either Lehal or OK Trans. While that portion of the decision presents a distinct legal issue, it reinforces the broader point that adding parties to a transportation arrangement does not necessarily insulate companies farther up the chain from litigation.
Defending Carrier-Selection Decisions
For freight brokers, motor carriers, insurers, and claims professionals, the takeaway from Crane is not that every carrier-selection decision now creates liability. Montgomery did not establish a national negligence standard for freight brokers, and Crane did not hold that PTM was negligent. State law will continue to determine whether a duty exists, what reasonable care requires, and whether an alleged failure in the selection process had any causal connection to the accident.
The more immediate consequence is that brokers should be prepared to defend the merits of their selection decisions rather than rely primarily on FAAAA preemption to prevent those decisions from being examined. That makes documentation particularly important. Brokers should understand the standards they use to approve carriers, whether those standards are consistently applied, what happens when a carrier falls outside the preferred criteria, who has authority to approve an exception, and whether the basis for that exception is documented. Companies that permit re-brokering should also understand what visibility they retain into downstream carrier selection and whether their contracts adequately address those arrangements.
The same considerations should shape the response to a serious accident. Brokers and their insurers should preserve the carrier-selection file as it existed when the load was tendered, along with contracts, load tenders, communications, insurance information, safety data, internal evaluations, and records concerning any downstream brokerage arrangements. Waiting until litigation is underway to reconstruct that information may mean that critical evidence is no longer available.
Montgomery answered the federal preemption question. Crane offers an early indication of what comes next. Broker-liability litigation will increasingly turn on the more difficult questions of what the broker knew, what it should have known, how it acted on that information, and whether any alleged deficiency actually contributed to the accident.
For the transportation industry, that means the foundation for defending the next negligent-selection claim may be established long before an accident occurs. A broker that can reconstruct the information available at the time, explain the standards it applied, and demonstrate why the selected carrier reasonably satisfied those standards will be in a far stronger position to defend the merits of a post-Montgomery claim.
For questions about the impact of Montgomery and Crane or guidance on addressing these evolving liability issues, please contact a member of Chartwell’s Transportation team.
