C.H. Robinson has been dismissed as a defendant in a Florida case that might have been one of the first tests of broker liability in a legal arena changed by Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II.
A court document filed Friday afternoon in the 19th Circuit Court for St. Lucie County, in the widely-publicized case involving driver Harjinder Singh and his fatal u-turn behind the wheel, removed C.H. Robinson as a defendant in the lawsuit brought by the estate of Faniola Joseph, killed in the crash along with two others that occurred after Singh’s tragic turn.
Reiterates: we weren’t part of this
The document doesn’t say why C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) was dismissed as a defendant. But in a prepared statement, the giant 3PL said the same thing Tuesday as it did when the lawsuit from Joseph’s estate was first filed: it had nothing to do with any of the companies involved in the crash.
“The lawsuit in Cantelar v. White Hawk Carriers incorrectly alleged that C.H. Robinson brokered the shipment involved in the accident,” the company said in a prepared statement provided to FreightWaves. “That was false, which is why C.H. Robinson has been dismissed from the case.” (Yaniel Cantelar represents the Joseph estate).
White Hawk is the name of the carrier that Singh was driving for when the crash occurred in August 2025. C.H. Robinson, when the suit was filed, immediately said through its chief legal officer Dorothy Capers that White Hawk “is not an approved carrier for C.H. Robinson nor has been authorized in our system for years.”
Capers said C.H. Robinson had not done business with White Hawk since late January 2024.
That was the argument C.H. Robinson reiterated Tuesday with the news that it was dismissed as a defendant.
“C.H. Robinson did not broker or arrange the shipment, nor was it involved in the selection of the trucking company that moved the shipment.” the statement said. “In fact, at the time of the accident, the trucking company in question was blocked in C.H. Robinson’s system from being booked on any load.”
C.H. Robinson presumably demonstrated that fact to attorneys for the Joseph estate. “Once the plaintiff learned the truth, they voluntarily dismissed C.H. Robinson from the case on June 26, 2026,” the 3PL’s statement said. “C.H. Robinson should not have been named as a defendant in this case, and its dismissal reflects the underlying facts.”
In the initial lawsuit, the recap of how the load came to be hauled by White Hawk and Singh suggested there had been double brokering somewhere in its history. And even if that turns out to be true, C.H. Robinson won’t be accused of being a party to it.
“Any commentary suggesting that C.H. Robinson may have been involved through a ‘double brokerage’ arrangement or somehow booked the load outside of its mandatory, rigorous, and multi-layered carrier vetting process is false,” the company’s statement said. “This was not a C.H. Robinson load, and neither C.H. Robinson nor any C.H. Robinson employee had any role in brokering or arranging the transportation of this load with any carrier.”
No test of new definition of broker liability
From a broader perspective, the elimination of C.H. Robinson from the case means that the highly-publicized fatal crash will not have a broker as a defendant. And in the post-Montgomery ecosystem of trucking lawsuits that could bring in the issue of broker liability brought to life by the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision, the tragic case of Harjinder Singh’s fatal u-turn won’t be one of them.
In that crash, Singh was making an illegal u-turn across multiple lanes of Florida’s Turnpike. Joseph and two other individuals were in a minivan that ended up wedged under Singh’s truck after it had sought to make its turn.
Singh’s status as an illegal immigrant made the case more than just the tragic death of the three passengers in the minivan. The fact that he was illegal, had a CDL issued by California and was not proficient in English injected a hefty dose of politics into the post-crash discussion.
Singh is being held in a Florida jail while awaiting trial on three counts of vehicular homicide.
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