Legal issues

The California Clean Truck Check registration deadline has been extended to Jan. 31.

Cummins Inc. will pay nearly $1.7 billion to federal and state regulators to settle a more than 4-year-old emissions-cheating case.

A lawsuit challenging the waiver granted by the EPA to California for its Advanced Clean Trucks rule will be delayed.

There’s a new nuclear verdict against a trucking company and it comes out of a case in Georgia.

An earlier Uber/Postmates court victory over AB5 in California has been vacated.  

Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton outside federal court after being sentenced to four years in prison. (Photo: Matthew Lee/Inner City Press)

The upcoming trial between the Haslam family and Berkshire Hathaway will see some limits on discussing a contentious issue.

Alleged thefts of chicken and chicken-adjacent foods on both sides of the Atlantic have me feeling fricasseed.

California has asked the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver to implement the Advanced Clean Fleets rule.

Feds compare convicted startup founders Elizabeth Holmes and Trevor Milton in recommending Nikola’s founder receive a similar sentence.

Federal prosecutors want to see Nikola founder Trevor Milton imprisoned for 11 years as punishment for lying to investors.

GlobalTranz prefers the Supreme Court not review its appellate court victory in a case involving a fatal accident. 

Two of the most significant plotters in the Louisiana staged accident scheme were to be sentenced Thursday but it’s been delayed.

The first deadline for a little-noticed environmental rule affecting all trucks traveling in California is Dec. 31.

A federal judge has sentenced Amy Shepherd, 44, of Wichita, Kansas, to 18 months in prison for stealing nearly $113,000 from the trucking company where she worked for nearly three years.

A Berkshire lawsuit against Pilot’s founding family over payments made to company executives won’t be heard alongside another case.

Franklin Ray was sentenced to 212 months in federal prison for his role in multiple fraud schemes, including bilking investors out of $40 million in a truck investment venture.

A request for the Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling could bring clarity to conflicting decisions across multiple courts about broker liability.

A Tennessee-based trucking and logistics company has agreed to pay $700,000 to settle allegations by the U.S. Department of Justice that it discriminated against noncitizen workers when checking their permission to work in the U.S.

U.S. cargo airline Amerijet accuses Korean Air of protectionism. Korean Air says Amerijet is trying to cover up the true nature of its relationship with Maersk Air Cargo because it violates air transport rules.

Coyote Logistics won a legal battle over liability, but the victory may have repercussions beyond this particular case.

A Q3 increase in reported incidents of cargo theft was fueled by a triple-digit rise in “strategic” thefts like cargo misdirection, CargoNet says.

It’s back to the courtroom for the CTA and OOIDA as they continue their legal battle against California’s AB5.

An online auction is slated for Tuesday to sell the assets of Minnesota-based Twin Express Inc., which had more than 70 power units, after the trucking company defaulted on a $19 million loan.

A white paper by factoring company OTR Solutions highlights risks it sees from the combination of 3PL bankruptcies and asset-based lending.

The family who founded Pilot Travel Centers and sold 80% of it to Berkshire Hathaway has filed suit over valuing the final 20%.

A former senior executive at Polar Air Cargo pleaded guilty to corporate corruption and agreed to pay restitution of $9.3 million in addition to serving a potential jail sentence.

While logistics visibility platform provider Slync had hoped that new management and a $24 million cash infusion in February would be enough to save the FreightTech company after its former CEO was indicted on fraud charges, the company is proceeding with an alternative option to a traditional bankruptcy and plans to wind down operations and sell off its technology.

Coming on the heels of the hack against LTL carrier Estes, an industry meeting maps out ways to battle cyberattacks.

Amerijet, a mid-tier cargo airline based in Miami, is trying to block a startup operator of business jets owned by Korean Air from gaining flight access to the U.S. because it says the Korean flag carrier is undermining its expansion into Korea.

The California Trucking Association has filed suit in federal court, seeking to block implementation of the California Advanced Clean Fleets rule.

California says, once again, that the state’s trucking sector is holding up under AB5.

A 40-year-old Montana trucking company and freight brokerage has shuttered operations, leaving nearly 275 truck drivers and office personnel without jobs.

Jeremy Daily, a cybersecurity expert and presenter at an upcoming conference on the issue, discusses the Estes hack in a Q&A.

Even as a Wall Street bank counts up the possible losses at Estes, the LTL carrier tells customers things are looking up.

A federal judge has ruled that Total Quality Logistics — the second-largest freight brokerage in the U.S. — violated federal law and owes overtime pay to thousands of former employees who worked more than 40 hours a week.

There’s been a major technology failure at Estes Express, but it’s unclear whether it is a cyberattack.

A new report is offering more details about what led investigators to file murder charges against a New Jersey truck driver after a woman was found dead on the floorboard of his tractor-trailer in Maryland.

A broker that hired a carrier whose truck struck a teenager is not liable, according to an Illinois appellate court.

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general filed suit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, alleging the e-commerce giant used its monopoly power to “inflate prices, degrade quality and stifle innovation for consumers and businesses.”

Two subsidiaries of trucking conglomerate TFI International have been sued by the EEOC over alleged discrimination against two gay employees who ultimately were fired.

What’s next for the three-headed beast of AB5 litigation in California? It might be whether the state’s Supreme Court takes up the so-called Olson case.

A federal judge has ordered a Mississippi trucking company and its owner, Xavier Bailey, to pay more than $482,000 after finding Bailey made false statements in order to obtain funds through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

BNSF has reached a settlement in a lawsuit it lost earlier that threatened it with a payout of $228 million.

BNSF is a multibillion dollar freight railroad. Northern Pacific Airways is a tiny airline that has been in business for less than three months. BNSF says the airline is infringing on a trademark it owns.

Lisa Celli was excited to start her first day on Jan. 5 as a contractor delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service in the small unincorporated town in California where she and her husband live. However, less than 24 hours after finishing her first route for Ameritrans Express, she received an alarming email stating the contract delivery company was taking “drastic action.”

In what is far from a nuclear verdict, a long-running suit against Knight Transportation in California was settled for $400,000.

A more than $36 million verdict was issued against Werner over its failure to hire a deaf driver back in 2018.

A key participant in Louisiana’s Operation Sideswipe was to be sentenced Thursday, but a new date sets up a sentencing doubleheader.

Ohio-based Republic Steel has been ordered to pay nearly $4.6 million to Pennsylvania-based Beemac Trucking and Deemac Services after a federal jury determined the steel mill breached its contract by failing to pay the companies millions of dollars in outstanding invoices.

A federal grand jury has indicted a former employee of a North Carolina-based trucking company, alleging she defrauded her employer of more than $900,000.

Werner has filed an appeal to Texas’ highest court of a verdict that now has a more than $100 million price tag.

Five new indictments have been handed down by the U.S. attorney in the New Orleans-area scam to stage collisions with trucks and collect insurance dollars.

An NLRB action is being viewed by the Teamsters as providing an incentive for companies to consider independent contractors as employees.

The waiver the EPA granted to California to allow its Clean Trucks rule to proceed has states lined up in court on either side of the issue.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is recommending a long list of fixes to the problem of large verdicts in truck accident litigation.

Two completely different approaches taken by two different circuit courts over broker liability could result in another trip to the Supreme Court on the issue.

The 7th Circuit on Tuesday ruled in favor of the freight brokerage industry regarding negligence claims.

A former third-party CDL skills tester in Idaho was recently sentenced to two years in prison for his role in a three-year bribery scheme.

Neither DAT nor Convoy would be able to refile lawsuits against each other that they have agreed to drop.

Western Global Airlines has hit hard times, losing Amazon as a primary customer, piling up debt and facing at least two lawsuits.

California’s Supreme Court will review a lower court and appellate court decision to settle the question of Prop 22’s constitutionality.

Western Global Airlines appears to be winding down operations for a potential bankruptcy.

The owner of Florida-based Royal Bengal Logistics has been arrested on fraud charges in connection with a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

California has made its case in the latest round of AB5 legal proceedings, and it can cite the past trucking year in its arguments.

A request by the Department of Labor in an ongoing legal appeal suggests its independent contractor rule won’t be made until August or September.

In the so-called Atlanta Opera case, the National Labor Relations Board overturned an earlier precedent that made it easier to define workers as independent contractors.

Nineteen states want an appellate court review of an EPA waiver that allows California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule to proceed.

A federal grand jury recently indicted two former trucking employees of MH Group, alleging the pair orchestrated an elaborate wire fraud scheme to defraud the Texas-based carrier out of $1.4 million.

Since leaving Total Quality Logistics in April 2021, ex-broker Jacob Patterson has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Cincinnati-based freight brokerage over claims that he has violated his noncompete agreement twice in the past two years.

A 5-year-old judgment against Werner has been upheld on appeal by a Texas court, with the amount now standing at more than $100 million.

The so-called Olson case over AB5 draws interest from well beyond California.

DAT’s breach-of-contract claim against Convoy will also proceed.

U.S. Xpress, about to be sold to Knight-Swift, has settled 4-year old litigation regarding its initial public offering.

In the latest bid to block the AB5 independent contractor law from implementation in California’s trucking sector, two key groups are quoting the author of the law.

The final panel at the TIA annual meeting echoed a theme of the whole meeting: Double brokering and fraud are surging.

The potential widening of broker liability in the Miller case against C.H. Robinson is creating fears among 3PLs, but attorneys see a potential reversal.

A case involving the theft of expensive freight may have led to a legal precedent benefiting brokerage liability.

Four former executives at Polar Air Cargo were indicted on charges of defrauding the company through an elaborate kickback scheme.

The suit by the California Trucking Association and OOIDA against California’s AB5 independent contractor law will add an argument that succeeded elsewhere.

App-based companies fighting AB5 in California got a second court win last week as a three-judge panel cited statements by AB5’s author in its ruling.

A three-judge panel has reversed a lower court ruling that California’s Proposition 22 was unconstitutional.

A former FedEx Ground contractor, accused of killing 7-year-old Athena Strand of Paradise, Texas, pleaded not guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping charges on Monday during his arraignment hearing in Wise County, Texas.

What if the English trucker who made off with 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs was trying to spare innocent taste buds?

Federal prosecutors allege UPS workers took possession of the drug, and a third worker not employed by the company provided fraudulent mailing labels.

The former safety manager of two California trucking companies was sentenced to three years of probation for his role in an illegal cargo tank repair conspiracy.

Lawmakers in Iowa and Florida are considering bills to curb nuclear verdicts against trucking companies.

Seven people have been sentenced this month in the Louisiana truck collision scam.

Prosecutors allege former Slync CEO Chris Kirchner misappropriated over $28 million from the company he helped launch to fund his lavish lifestyle.

The U.S. Postal Service is canceling its mail contract with a California-based trucking company with a history of safety violations and drivers who were involved in two fatal crashes in the past two years.

Former Celadon trucking officials have settled a fraud case with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The former co-owner of an Iowa trucking company was sentenced Tuesday for orchestrating an elaborate $250,000 check kiting scheme. He is also facing unrelated charges in state court that he allowed more than 800 pigs to starve or freeze to death in his care in December 2021.

Three defendants who pleaded guilty in the Louisiana staged accident scam will get probation, not jail time.

The California Trucking Association is making its pitch for another injunction to keep AB5 out of the state’s trucking sector.

Nearly 1,400 delivery drivers will split $5.6 million following an eight-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which found that Parts Authority Arizona LLC and Diligent Delivery Systems misclassified its employee drivers as independent contractors.

Already serving nearly seven years in federal prison for embezzling more than $700,000 from the trucking company where she worked, a Missouri bookkeeper was sentenced to two more years for committing Paycheck Protection Program loan fraud.

Amanda May, 36, of Whitesville, Kentucky, has filed a motion to intervene in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by her mother’s partner, Spangle The Clown, against Lala Trucking Inc. and one of its drivers.

California’s ABC test was a key reason why a decade-long misclassification case against Hub Group settled.

An appellate court that will determine whether the Prop 22 gig worker vote in California is constitutional recently heard arguments.

An Indiana trucking company owner claims his office manager of over 20 years — along with her husband — stole more than $600,000 from his affiliated companies over a five-year period.