Fourth Wrongful-Death Suit Filed Over Greg Biffle Plane Crash, Alleging Unqualified Co-Pilot Was Used to Save Cost
Why It MattersThe case shows how a single crew-composition decision on an owner-operated private jet can pull the aircraft owner, its leasing company and the crew's estates into overlapping civil liability.
What happened
The estate of Craig Wadsworth, a personal assistant and longtime friend of former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit over the December 2025 plane crash that killed seven people, including Biffle, his wife and two children. It is the fourth wrongful-death suit against Biffle's estate, and the four suits total $40 million.
The suit was filed in Iredell County, North Carolina, where the crash occurred at Statesville Regional Airport. The defendants are the estates of Biffle, pilot Dennis Dutton and his 20-year-old son Jack Dutton, along with GB Aviation Leasing LLC, a private aviation company owned by Biffle. Wadsworth's family seeks at least $25,000, plus court costs and interest.
The complaint alleges that Biffle and Dennis Dutton knew a qualified second co-pilot was required to fly the Cessna Citation II C550 business jet, yet allowed Jack Dutton, who was not qualified, to fly. It contends Biffle was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to avoid the expense of a professional co-pilot, and it cites a conversation in which Dennis Dutton told Biffle he had found a co-pilot who would be "cheap." The estate alleges Biffle was willfully negligent, putting personal convenience, cost savings and giving an inexperienced airman cockpit experience ahead of halting the flight.
The suit also accuses GB Aviation Leasing of lacking an air carrier certificate, which the Federal Aviation Administration requires to operate as a commercial charter carrier. It claims Biffle was negligent as Dutton's boss and as owner and manager of the company that authorized the crew, and it names Dennis and Jack Dutton as negligent in their roles as pilot in command and acting crewman.
The estates of Dennis and Jack Dutton filed wrongful-death suits in April. About a month later, Nicole Biffle, Greg Biffle's former wife and the mother of their 14-year-old daughter Emma, who died in the crash, filed her own suit.
Industry impact & what to watch
Civil suits of this kind tend to turn on who controlled the decision about crew, and on whether the flight was operated under the right regulatory framework. Where an owner-operated jet is flown under private rules, the line between a lawful private flight and an operation that needed a commercial certificate depends on how the aircraft was held, who paid for what, and who had authority over the crew. The Wadsworth complaint pleads both angles at once: a crew-qualification failure on the Citation II C550, and an operator-certification failure at GB Aviation Leasing.
For the owner-operated and leased-aircraft segment, the pattern in this litigation is that liability is pleaded across every layer: the owner, the company holding the aircraft, and the crew's estates. Plaintiffs' framing is that cost-driven crewing choices are not a defence but a motive, which makes the arrangements behind a flight, including who was hired and why, a central subject for discovery.
The allegations remain allegations. The pending items are the defendants' responses in Iredell County and any findings on crew qualification and operating authority that come out of the process, which would test whether the claims about the second pilot and the missing air carrier certificate hold.
