Author: Mike Thomas

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed a man to sue a major logistics company after he lost part of his leg in a semi tractor-trailer crash, a decision that could have big ripple effects across the trucking industry.

The justices ruled unanimously in favor of Shawn Montgomery, whose parked vehicle was hit by a speeding truck driver on an Illinois highway in 2017. He wants to sue C.H. Robinson, the country’s largest freight broker by size, over its role in putting the driver on the road despite what he called “serious red flags.”

The decision does not mean Montgomery will necessarily win the lawsuit, which the company is contesting. But the ruling opens the door to increased liability for freight brokers, a key part of the industry.

The Trump administration and companies such as Amazon had argued that letting the suit go forward would expose logistics companies to liability under a “patchwork” of state laws.

The Transportation Intermediaries Association, an industry group, said the decision was “deeply disappointing.”

“This is like asking travel agents to evaluate the safety of a given airline despite the fact that the airline has been licensed to fly by the federal government,” said Chris Burroughs, the group’s president and CEO. “We are working with our members to assess potential next steps to mitigate the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision.”

Montgomery’s lawyers say the trucker had been cited for careless driving in another crash months earlier and that the carrier he worked for had been involved with at least three crashes in a span of about five months.

Montgomery’s lawsuit said C.H. Robinson should share liability because it hired the carrier despite those problems.

Montgomery’s appeal was backed by more than two dozen states. They said a win for him would help bolster safety in an industry that moves billions of tons of goods across billions of miles every year.

The company argued the suit, filed under state law, must be tossed out because brokers rely on the federal government to regulate carriers and federal law trumps state law.

But in an opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court disagreed. The justices found Montgomery’s claims can move forward because they fall under an exception for safety regulations. The high court overturned a lower-court ruling in the company’s favor.

The decision could increase insurance costs for freight brokers that eventually “cascade through the economy” and result in higher prices for consumers, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Still, “truck safety is a matter of life and death,” Kavanaugh wrote.

C.H. Robinson, which is based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, pointed to another part of his concurrence, where he said the decision does not mean brokers will be “routinely subject” to lawsuits.

“We will keep working with policymakers, advocates, carriers, our customers, and others across the industry to strengthen the national safety system and advance practices that reduce accidents on America’s roads,” said Dorothy Capers, the company’s chief legal officer.

The ruling could have far reaching effects if brokers can be held liable for the actions of the trucking companies they hire, said Brian Watt, who runs a freight logistics company in Florida.

Brokers will now have to focus more on the safety records of the truckers they contract with to haul all kinds of goods, including hazardous materials, instead of just looking for the cheapest and fastest option.

“More than 28,000 federally licensed brokers currently operate in the United States with virtually no meaningful federal safety oversight regarding how they select carriers,” Watt said in a post on LinkedIn. He said there are tougher standards for brokers that arrange shipments out of ports and on railroads, but that highway shipments face fewer restrictions.

The Transportation Department has been cracking down on the trucking industry over the past year by trying to force unqualified drivers, trucking companies and schools out of the industry.

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Associated Press writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

Mark Kalinowski’s dad fell for a classic travel scam.

“Someone called one day and said, ‘Hey, good news, you won a trip to Florida. It’s all paid for. Just pay that $200 upfront holding fee,’” Kalinowski recalled from his home in Calgary.
“He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, let me give you my credit card.’”

His dad didn’t sweat the loss, which occurred over a decade ago. But since then, the stream of travel scams has become a flood, posing pitfalls that range from fake websites to phishing emails, phoney vacation listings and hacked loyalty points.

The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies and Travel Advisors, along with other industry groups abroad, has warned about a proliferation of scam and fraud attempts over the past several years as artificial intelligence tools expand the range of criminal opportunities.

Online travel giant Booking.com said in 2024 that AI had fuelled an increase in travel scams of between 500 and 900 per cent over the previous 18 months.

That same year, Flight Centre Canada told The Canadian Press it worked with Google and other search engines to take down more than 200 fraudulent listings on impostor websites in just one month after the search results began appearing in online queries for the travel agency.

Kalinowski, a financial educator at the Credit Counselling Society, says would-be customers should be wary of online ads that link to third-party platforms posing as a hotel or airline.

“Scams are becoming more prevalent. People from all different segments and classes and cohorts of life fall for them. It’s not a question of intelligence,” he said.

Some fraudulent websites take photos and information from hotel, airline and cruise sites to create the impression customers are booking through those same companies.

“If you book from one of these sites, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the room you paid for, and you may not find out until you arrive at the destination — and by that time, your money is likely gone,” Toronto-Dominion Bank warned in a post about travel scams on its website.

Fraudulent postings on vacation rental platforms pose similar risks.

“You’ll think you’re booking an Airbnb or VRBO, and there’s just nothing there when you arrive on the other side,” Kalinowski said.

Other telltale signs of a travel scam include deals that appear too good to be true, high-pressure sales tactics and requests for payment outside usual methods, such as wire transfers rather than payment through the Airbnb app, for example.

Kalinowski recalls one ad, supposedly for Southwest Airlines, that bundled those first two red flags — a tempting offer and urgency — together by offering free flights to the first 500 people who booked via a particular website.

“I don’t know when the last time you had a free flight was,” he said. 

“It’s been a long time for me.”

Other potential tells include a request to pay via gift cards or cryptocurrency, rather than going with secure payment methods such as credit cards, which often offer protection if something goes awry.

To guard against scams, travellers should take care to visit a hotel, airline or cruise line’s actual site by typing it in directly or at least double-checking it rather than clicking on an ad. They can also book through a well-known travel agency.

Customers can find further peace of mind by contacting the provider — the airline or hotel, for example — afterward to verify a booking.

To steer clear of bogus vacation rentals, consult reviews and do a Google Street View search to check the address, said Pat Pellegrini, CEO of consumer research firm Vividata. A reverse image search can also reveal if those photos of a sumptuous beachfront patio are copied from another site.

“There’s a lot of bad players, so it makes you have to do a lot more work,” Pellegrini said. Among those bad actors, loyalty points remain a prime target, often via AI-driven phishing attempts.

“The odds of you getting a phishing email that’s looking for your credentials, and they’ll just keep trying to throw stuff at you until they get through, are very high,” Pellegrini said. “Loyalty points have been taken in the same manner.”

Phishing — emails, texts or calls that trick victims into handing over banking details or other sensitive information — saw an especially big surge in recent years, according to Booking.com. Phishing messages are often identifiable by their use of urgent or threatening language, requests for financial info and spelling or grammar mistakes.

For those who do get scammed, report it to local police, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and the platform that hosted the scam — Google or a short-term rental platform, for example — advises RateHub, an online comparison site for financial products.

Victims should also reach out to their bank or credit card company as soon as possible to try to freeze the payment as well as any compromised accounts, and to monitor for suspicious transactions.

Victims can then notify credit bureaus to flag possible changes to their credit file.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2026.