CARSOLegal Counsel
For legal counsel · forensic look-back

Verify what the broker knew,
or should have known, on any given date.

Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II (U.S., May 14, 2026, 9–0) removed the federal shield: brokers now face state-law negligent-selection claims, and those claims turn on what the broker knew or should have known about the carrier. Carso maintains a cryptographically signed, intelligent record of every motor carrier's public standing, signed on the day it is aggregated, since 21 September 2026. For any day since, we can establish what information was available to a broker about that carrier, on the day it was hired and on the day any load ran, and prove the record has not been altered.

Request a look-back Verify it yourself
What you can establish

What was available to the broker, on the dates that matter.

1

The day the carrier was hired

Authority status, insurance on file, safety rating, inspections, crashes, and the connected entities, as the record stood that day. What the broker knew, if they looked. What they should have known, because it was there to be seen.

2

The day each load ran

The same record on each date of carriage, so changes between hire and loss are visible: a cancelled policy, a revoked authority, a new name at the same address.

3

Whether a report was run

If a Certified Diligence Report was ordered, its signed copy and its place in the chain. If none was, the signed record for that date stands on its own.

Constructive knowledge

If we held it, it was knowable.

Negligent selection charges a broker with what a reasonable inquiry would have revealed at the time of selection. Carso provides this record as a service, to any broker, every day. So what was knowable on a given date has an answer that does not depend on memory or on the broker's own files: what the record held that day, signed and time-stamped, available at the time.

Counsel asks us for the record as it stood on the dates in question. We return it with its chain proofs. Whether the broker's care was reasonable is a question of state law for the parties and the court; the standard is reasonable care, not the use of any one tool. We supply what was there to be seen.

Look back

Pick a date. See the day's signed root.

This reads the public chain directly, from the same repository anyone can read. For a date since 21 September 2026 it shows that day's Merkle root, the link to the day before, and the two independent timestamp tokens. The record for a carrier on that day is verified against this root.

Chain begins 2026-09-21

Source: carso-diligence-lookback-chain, read live. Verification procedure: VERIFY.md.

How the record is kept

Signed on the day. Time-stamped by two independent authorities. Published.

  • Source. FMCSA registration, authority, insurance, inspection, and crash filings, plus the corporate and court records that connect carriers, aggregated from the source feeds into the Carso Cortex.
  • Signature. Each day, the state of every carrier's record is fingerprinted (SHA-256) and built into a Merkle tree. The day's root is signed by Carso and chained to the day before.
  • Time-stamp. Two independent public authorities, FreeTSA and DigiCert, time-stamp each root under RFC 3161. They attest when; Carso attests who.
  • Publication. Roots, timestamp tokens, and public keys are published in an append-only public repository. Presenting two versions of a day is detectable by anyone, forever.
  • Integrity. Once a day's root is published, that day's record cannot be changed or backdated without detection, by the carrier, by any platform, or by Carso.
  • Scope. The daily signed chain begins in September 2026. Four earlier record sets, captured between 30 July and 20 September 2026, were sealed on 23 September 2026 and carry both dates; they prove the record set existed and is unaltered since sealing, not the state of an individual carrier on the capture date.
Independence

You do not have to trust us. Check it.

Fetch the root and timestamp tokens for the date from the public repository, compare the record's fingerprint against the tree, and verify the tokens with standard openssl tools. No account, no permission, and no reliance on Carso's word. A written verification procedure is supplied with every look-back.

The public chain

Request

Requesting a look-back.

Tell us the carrier (USDOT or MC number), the dates in question, and the matter. We return the signed record for each date, the chain proofs, the verification procedure, and, where one exists, the Certified Diligence Report. Requests are answered by a named investigator and quoted before work begins. Litigation support and expert declarations are available.

We respond to subpoenas and to authorized requests from counsel of record. We do not release driver-reported material except under legal process.

legal@carsocybernetics.com

(415) 216-9897 · book a 30-minute call

Questions
What did Montgomery decide?

That federal law (the FAAAA) does not preempt state-law negligent-selection claims against freight brokers. It removed a shield. It did not define the duty of care; that comes from state common law, and it is commonly framed as what the broker knew or should have known. Commentators' practical guidance since the ruling is guidance, not the Court's holding.

What exactly is certified?

That a record existed in a specific form on a specific day, who captured it, and that it has not been altered since. Not that a carrier is honest, safe, or fit. The record shows what the public sources showed.

Is this admissible?

That is a question for the court and for you. What we supply is a record with an independent, public, verifiable chain of custody in time, and a written procedure any expert can repeat.

What if the broker never ran a report?

The record for that day was still signed. A look-back does not depend on a report having been ordered.

How far back does it go?

Two answers, and we keep them separate. Per-carrier reconstruction, what carrier X looked like on date D: 20 September 2026 forward. Sealed, tamper-evident historical record sets: 30 July 2026 forward, each stamped with its original capture date and its seal date (sealed 23 September 2026, unaltered since). A seal date is never presented as a capture date.

Who signs, and who time-stamps?

Carso signs each day's root. FreeTSA and DigiCert, two independent public timestamp authorities, time-stamp it under RFC 3161. The process is patent-pending; a provisional application is on file with the USPTO.