What a Top Plaintiff Attorney Looks for Before Suing a Broker

What red flags does a plaintiff attorney see in a broker's carrier-vetting file after a fatal crash?

Michael Leizerman, the plaintiff attorney who won the Supreme Court case that killed federal preemption for broker negligent-selection claims, told more than 600 freight professionals exactly what he looks for when deciding whether to sue a broker. He's not chasing obscure data points. He's looking for facts that make the carrier-selection decision impossible to defend in front of a jury.

Leizerman opened with the cases he actually sees. A carrier with a conditional safety rating allegedly told by a broker to reform under new authority so they could keep working together. A real estate investor with no trucking background who started a trucking company and admitted after a catastrophic accident that he didn't understand the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Drivers with drug histories. Stolen authority. No insurance. Authority taped onto the side of a truck. Families killed. Truck drivers catastrophically injured.

The interview, conducted by freight attorney and Carrier Assure founder who created the CAVRA carrier-vetting standard, forced the industry to confront what reasonable carrier selection looks like when a plaintiff attorney reviews the file after the crash.

Conditional safety ratings are an immediate red flag

Leizerman confirmed that conditional carriers are one of the first things plaintiff attorneys notice. If a broker or shipper uses a conditional carrier and a catastrophic crash follows, that decision will be difficult to explain. A conditional safety rating should be treated as a hard stop.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration assigns a conditional rating when a carrier demonstrates inadequate safety management controls during an audit. The carrier is allowed to operate but must fix the deficiencies. Brokers who use conditional carriers after a crash will be asked why they placed an 80,000-pound truck on the road when the government had already flagged the carrier's safety controls as inadequate.

New authority with no meaningful history

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 later, with no meaningful history, no inspection record, no verified references, and no additional controls, that's exactly the kind of fact a plaintiff attorney will focus on.

Reasonable carrier selection is not about one data point. It's about context. A carrier with limited history may require additional verification: prior experience, references, direct insurance verification, local or lower-risk initial loads, and closer monitoring. A broker that skips all of those steps and books a new-authority carrier cross-country on day three will struggle to explain the decision.

Chameleon carriers and identity mismatches

Leizerman described cases involving carriers that appeared to reform under new authority after compliance or safety problems. He also discussed stolen authority, taped-on authority, and identity mismatches. Those are not theoretical concerns. They are central carrier-vetting risks.

Carrier vetting is not complete if the carrier that was approved is not the carrier that actually shows up. Identity control must be treated as part of carrier selection. That means confirming the carrier, confirming the driver when practical, verifying MC or DOT information, and not releasing pickup information before some form of verification occurs.

Leizerman made one of the most powerful operational points of the entire interview when he said many of his cases would not exist if someone at pickup or receiving simply looked at the name on the truck and compared it to the freight documents. Not because every facility can catch every fraud scheme, but because some of the most serious risks are visible. When visible risks are ignored, the file becomes difficult to defend.

Out-of-service rates that should have caused someone to pause

Plaintiff attorneys are not looking for a perfect interpretation of every safety metric. They are looking for obvious numbers that should have caused someone to pause. Leizerman gave the example of a carrier with a 45 percent vehicle out-of-service rate and an elevated driver out-of-service rate, where the broker had not meaningfully reviewed the data.

The question is not whether every elevated number means the carrier can never be used. The question is whether the company saw the issue, understood the issue, escalated the issue, asked questions, documented the decision, or ignored it. That is why written standards matter.

Repeated involuntary revocations

A carrier with repeated revocations may raise questions about insurance instability, financial instability, compliance discipline, or the carrier's ability to maintain a lawful operation. A revocation does not automatically prove negligence. But repeated revocations are the type of pattern that can cause a plaintiff attorney to dig deeper.

Brokers who use carriers with multiple involuntary revocations in their recent history will be asked whether they reviewed the pattern, whether they asked the carrier to explain it, and whether they documented any of that review.

The most dangerous file is the one that cannot explain itself

The most dangerous file is not always the file with risk. Freight is full of risk. The most dangerous file is the file that cannot explain itself. A broker or shipper that can show a written policy, defined standards, consistent review, escalation, identity control, and documentation is in a materially different position than a company that has no rules, no notes, no explanation, and no record of why a carrier was used.

Reasonable carrier selection does not require perfection. It requires a defensible process. The plaintiff attorney does not get to define the freight industry's standard alone. But if the file is silent, the plaintiff attorney gets to tell the story.

AI and automation can create risk if used only to onboard carriers faster

AI and automation can make carrier vetting better. They can help identify related entities, chameleon indicators, VIN associations, address overlaps, fraud patterns, and inconsistent data. Used correctly, technology can improve safety and defensibility.

But technology can also create risk if it is used only to increase capacity, onboard carriers faster, and remove human judgment from the process. AI should make carrier vetting smarter. It should not become a shortcut around reasonable review.

Capacity pressure is not a substitute for reasonable care

Brokers are under constant pressure to find capacity. Shippers need freight moved. Operations teams are judged by service, speed, and margin. But not all capacity is good capacity. A broker's value is not merely finding a truck. A broker's value is finding appropriate, reliable, and reasonably vetted capacity.

When a carrier presents obvious safety, identity, or operational red flags, "the load needed to move" is not enough. Capacity pressure is not a substitute for reasonable care.

Shippers can create their own risk at the facility

Many shippers assume carrier-selection risk belongs entirely to the broker. In many ordinary brokered transactions, the broker is the party selecting and contracting with the carrier. But that does not mean shippers can ignore obvious facts at the facility.

If the wrong truck appears at pickup, if the carrier name does not match the paperwork, if the MC or DOT information is inconsistent, or if the facility releases freight despite obvious identity problems, the shipper may have created its own risk. Basic pickup verification matters.

What brokers should add to their carrier-onboarding workflow

Leizerman repeatedly said he does not automatically sue brokers. He looks for cases that pass the common-sense test. He looks for decisions that a jury would understand as unreasonable. That should give responsible companies some confidence.

The brokers and shippers that are most worried are often the ones already doing the work. They have policies. They use vetting tools. They document decisions. They train their teams. They ask hard questions. They escalate risk. Those companies should continue improving, but they should not confuse reasonable care with impossible perfection.

The companies with the greatest exposure are the ones still treating carrier selection as a box-checking exercise or those making exceptions to their policies only to get capacity. Authority. Insurance. Not unsatisfactory. Load moved. That is no longer enough.

Brokers should add three checks to their carrier onboarding workflow: written escalation rules for conditional ratings, new authority, and elevated out-of-service rates; identity verification at pickup (truck name matches paperwork); and documentation of every exception to the written standard. The file has to explain itself.