Transportation Brokers Must Face Lawsuits Over Negligent Drivers, Illinois Court Rules
The Illinois First District Appellate Court recently decided that brokers for transportation and trucking services can no longer use federal law to shield themselves from liability in automobile death cases caused by drivers they hire. Amid an ongoing judicial debate over the application of The Federal Aviation Administration Act (“FAAA”) in state tort claims, the three-judge panel of the First District issued a unanimous opinion that a “safety exception” allowed those claims to proceed despite the FAAA’s otherwise stringent protections against such lawsuits.
The question of whether or not brokers can be held liable in state courts for the negligent selection of motor carriers has been at the center of a growing divide between courts nationwide. Many of these cases often deal with similar fact patterns involving a company looking to transport goods hiring a freight broker; then the freight broker hires a motor carrier to transport the goods, and the motor carrier’s driver harms or kills a person whilst in transit. This often leads to litigation seeking to hold the freight broker liable for negligent hiring.
The FAAA contains a provision which prevents states from enacting or enforcing laws “related to a price, route or service of any motor carrier or any motor private carrier, broker or freight forwarder with respect to the transportation of property.” Disagreement over whether this provision preempts negligent hiring claims has resulted in a “circuit split”, as courts differ on whether negligent hiring claims fit under the preempted state law, as well as whether exceptions in the FAA for “safety regulations” allow such claims to circumvent the preemption. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has led the pro-preemption contingency, issuing precedential opinions protecting freight brokers such as C.H. Robinson and GlobalTranz from negligent hiring claims.
Justice Carl Walker, writing for the First District, concurred with the Seventh Circuit and other courts that a plain and ordinary reading of the FAAA’s clause would disallow negligent hiring claims against trucking brokers. However, because previous decisions had not considered matters with “direct links” to motor safety, and because there exists no precedent in Illinois law as to whether the FAAA’s safety exception did or didn’t apply to road safety laws, Justice Walker ultimately allowed the lawsuit to continue under the safety exception. The FAAA “contains no corresponding directive to preempt provisions for the public safety, and given that absence, courts should defer to the presumption that Congress did not intend such displacement of state law in this area.” Justice Walker further wrote that, “it is highly unlikely Congress intended to permit brokers to act as negligently as they see fit, with no redress for an injured party, without making this intent clear on the statute’s face.”
The First District’s ruling represents another complicated development in the already volatile broker negligence debate. Transportation and trucking logistics brokers dealing with shifting legal standards among federal and state courts, can anticipate an increase in the volume and complexity of negligence lawsuits following the recent ruling. And without a clear directive from the United States Supreme Court, a bright line resolution to this legal conflict remains distant.
For more information about commercial liability exposure, contact any of the qualified attorneys at Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC.