All eyes are on where the justices, who granted certiorari in October, draw the line on the preemptive scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 — which bars any state law "relating to a price, route or service of any motor carrier" — and states' authority to regulate road safety through statutes and tort law.

In dispute is whether negligent hiring or negligent selection claims against freight brokers fall within a carveout in the FAAAA statute that preserves from preemption the "safety regulatory authority of a state with respect to motor vehicles." And the justices will zero in on what "with respect to" actually means in that safety exception.

Transportation and logistics providers say Congress always intended for the commercial trucking industry to be regulated at the federal level. Meanwhile, personal injury plaintiffs say state tort law is a chief remedy for holding freight brokers accountable for their persistent failings to responsibly vet the safety record of motor carriers they hire for any given transport.

"If the Supreme Court finds the claims aren't preempted, there's a risk of patchwork regulations where the standards are going to vary state-by-state and, perhaps, case-by-case," Duane Morris LLP partner Harry M. Byrne, who practices in product liability and business litigation, told Law360. "And brokers can be at risk even if they act responsibly by hiring motor carriers that have their federal license and have the right insurance and have the valid safety rating. And even then, those decisions can be second-guessed."

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