What the Plaintiff Attorney Who Won at the Supreme Court Looks for in Broker Negligent Selection Cases

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) When I interviewed Michael Leizerman, the plaintiff attorney who won at the United States Supreme Court in the broker negligent selection case now reshaping freight litigation, I expected pushback from the audience.

More than 600 brokers, shippers, freight forwarders, insurers, lawyers, and transportation professionals tuned in for the discussion. Some arrived frustrated and angry. Some felt that brokers and shippers were being asked to do the government’s job.

They wanted to know why the freight industry should be held responsible for a motor carrier’s bad decisions, a driver’s mistakes, or the FMCSA’s failure to remove unsafe carriers from the road. Then Michael started talking. He did not begin with legal theory. He did not begin with federal preemption, statutory construction, or case citations.

He began with the cases he actually sees. Like, a carrier with a conditional rating allegedly being told by a broker to reform under another authority so they could keep working together.

A real estate investor with no trucking background started a trucking company and admitted (after a terrible accident) that he did not understand the basics of what he was required to do under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Drivers with drug history issues. Stolen authority. No insurance. Authority taped onto the side of a truck.

Families killed. Truck drivers catastrophically injured. Lives permanently changed. It was hard to listen to. But it was also clarifying. For an industry that often talks about carrier vetting as paperwork, compliance, cost, or operational friction, Michael’s opening remarks forced everyone to confront the human side of the issue.

Carrier selection is not just about moving freight. It is one of the last meaningful decision points before an 80,000 pound truck is placed onto the road beside families, commuters, and professional drivers. That does not mean brokers or shippers are guarantors of motor carrier safety. They are not. It does not mean every crash is preventable.

It does not mean every bad outcome is negligence. But it does mean the industry can no longer pretend that carrier selection is satisfied by checking authority, checking insurance, and confirming the carrier is not rated unsatisfactory. That was the center of the conversation. I have spent my career studying carrier selection from nearly every angle.

I have litigated freight and trucking disputes, worked inside freight brokerages and transportation companies, advised industry participants, founded Carrier Assure, and served as an expert witness on broker liability and carrier selection.

I created the CAVRA standard because the industry needed practical, operational language for what reasonable carrier vetting should look like in the real world. That is also why I wanted Michael to speak directly to the industry. Not because plaintiff attorneys define the standard. They do not. But because the plaintiff attorney’s perspective matters.

They are the ones reviewing the file after the crash. They are the ones deciding whether the broker or shipper belongs in the case. They are the ones asking whether the carrier selection decision made sense before the accident happened. And Michael was very clear about what he looks for.

Indeed, he is not looking for perfection- he is looking for obvious failures. That is the point brokers and shippers need to understand. A top plaintiff attorney is not necessarily building a case because a broker missed some obscure data point buried deep in a government record.

A top plaintiff attorney is looking for facts that make the carrier selection decision difficult to defend in front of a jury. Was the carrier conditional rated? Was the carrier brand new? Was the carrier hired immediately after receiving authority? Were there chameleon or reincarnated carrier indicators? Was there stolen authority?

Did the truck at pickup match the carrier that was approved? Were out of service rates extreme? Were there repeated involuntary revocations? Did the broker or shipper use available data consistently? Was there any written policy? Was there any documentation? Did anyone stop and ask questions? That is the difference between risk and defensibility.

The first major issue is conditional safety ratings. In my view, and consistent with the carrier selection standard I advocate, a conditional safety rating should be treated as a hard stop. Michael confirmed that conditional carriers are one of the immediate red flags plaintiff attorneys notice.

If a broker or shipper uses a conditional carrier and a catastrophic crash follows, that decision will be difficult to explain. The second issue is new authority. New carriers are not automatically unsafe. Every carrier has to start somewhere. But when a carrier receives authority and is placed under contract for long haul shipments days