In Perrigo v. Rodriguez, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury recently awarded a $52.1 million verdict to Chad Perrigo and his wife, Alexa Perrigo, marking the latest example of “upstream” trucking companies facing liability for the actions of a subcontracted driver.
The verdict arose from an August 2021 motorcycle crash in Santa Clarita, California, involving motorcyclist Chad Perrigo and a truck driven by Jorge Castaneda Rodriguez. Rodriguez was driving a truck owned by Montecristo Trucking, which had received the freight through multiple subcontracting arrangements tied to a U.S. Postal Service contract. At the time of the crash, Rodriguez was violating federal Hours of Service regulations.
Before trial, the court rejected the upstream defendants’ claims that Rodriguez’s independent-contractor status insulated them from liability for his negligence. In doing so, the court held that, under California law, all defendant carriers in the distribution chain had a non-delegable duty to operate vehicles safely on public highways and could not rely on the independent-contractor defense to avoid liability. The jury ultimately held all three trucking companies in the subcontracting chain vicariously liable for Rodriguez’s negligence.
This verdict comes amid a broader shift in how trucking liability is assigned across the freight chain. Just weeks earlier, on May 14, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that a freight broker may face state-law claims for negligently hiring an unsafe carrier, allowing the claims against C.H. Robinson to proceed. Although the two cases target different parties through different theories – vicarious liability against carriers in one and negligent hiring claims against brokers and shippers in the other – they send the same cautionary message to transportation companies that contract with motor carriers: reduce risk through thorough robust carrier vetting and carefully drafted contracts.
Please contact John Lock, Esquire, of Lock Gordon’s Transportation Law Practice Group at jlock@lockgordon.com with questions about this article or any other aspect of trucking or transportation law.