C.H. Robinson has been dismissed as a defendant in a Florida case that may have been one of many first assessments of dealer legal responsibility in a authorized enviornment modified by Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II.
A court docket doc filed Friday afternoon within the nineteenth Circuit Court docket for St. Lucie County, within the widely-publicized case involving driver Harjinder Singh and his deadly u-turn behind the wheel, eliminated C.H. Robinson as a defendant within the lawsuit introduced by the property of Faniola Joseph, killed within the crash together with two others that occurred after Singh’s tragic flip.
Reiterates: we weren’t a part of this
The doc doesn’t say why C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) was dismissed as a defendant. However in a ready assertion, the enormous 3PL stated the identical factor Tuesday because it did when the lawsuit from Joseph’s property was first filed: it had nothing to do with any of the businesses concerned within the crash.
“The lawsuit in Cantelar v. White Hawk Carriers incorrectly alleged that C.H. Robinson brokered the cargo concerned within the accident,” the corporate stated in a ready assertion supplied to BigRig. “That was false, which is why C.H. Robinson has been dismissed from the case.” (Yaniel Cantelar represents the Joseph property).
White Hawk is the identify of the service that Singh was driving for when the crash occurred in August 2025. C.H. Robinson, when the swimsuit was filed, instantly stated by its chief authorized officer Dorothy Capers that White Hawk “shouldn’t be an permitted service for C.H. Robinson nor has been licensed in our system for years.”
Capers stated C.H. Robinson had not completed enterprise with White Hawk since late January 2024.
That was the argument C.H. Robinson reiterated Tuesday with the information that it was dismissed as a defendant.
“C.H. Robinson didn’t dealer or prepare the cargo, nor was it concerned within the collection of the trucking firm that moved the cargo.” the assertion stated. “In actual fact, on the time of the accident, the trucking firm in query was blocked in C.H. Robinson’s system from being booked on any load.”
C.H. Robinson presumably demonstrated that truth to attorneys for the Joseph property. “As soon as the plaintiff realized the reality, they voluntarily dismissed C.H. Robinson from the case on June 26, 2026,” the 3PL’s assertion stated. “C.H. Robinson mustn’t have been named as a defendant on this case, and its dismissal displays the underlying details.”
Within the preliminary lawsuit, the recap of how the load got here to be hauled by White Hawk and Singh instructed there had been double brokering someplace in its historical past. And even when that seems to be true, C.H. Robinson gained’t be accused of being a celebration to it.
“Any commentary suggesting that C.H. Robinson might have been concerned by a ‘double brokerage’ association or one way or the other booked the load exterior of its necessary, rigorous, and multi-layered service vetting course of is fake,” the corporate’s assertion stated. “This was not a C.H. Robinson load, and neither C.H. Robinson nor any C.H. Robinson worker had any function in brokering or arranging the transportation of this load with any service.”
No check of recent definition of dealer legal responsibility
From a broader perspective, the elimination of C.H. Robinson from the case implies that the highly-publicized deadly crash is not going to have a dealer as a defendant. And within the post-Montgomery ecosystem of trucking lawsuits that might deliver within the concern of dealer legal responsibility dropped at life by the Supreme Court docket’s unanimous resolution, the tragic case of Harjinder Singh’s deadly u-turn gained’t be one among them.
In that crash, Singh was making an unlawful u-turn throughout a number of lanes of Florida’s Turnpike. Joseph and two different people had been in a minivan that ended up wedged below Singh’s truck after it had sought to make its flip.
Singh’s standing as an unlawful immigrant made the case extra than simply the tragic dying of the three passengers within the minivan. The truth that he was unlawful, had a CDL issued by California and was not proficient in English injected a healthy dose of politics into the post-crash dialogue.
Singh is being held in a Florida jail whereas awaiting trial on three counts of vehicular murder.
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The put up C.H. Robinson out of Florida ‘U-turn’ lawsuit appeared first on BigRig.