Legal Analyst: Should Kyle Busch's family sue?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Welcome back. Some doctors and fans are urging the wife of late NASCAR champion Kyle Busch to file a lawsuit following her husband's death. The two-time champion died last week at just 41 years old. He died as a result of complications from pneumonia, which then led to sepsis. His death cert- his death certificate stated that Busch had been battling bacterial pneumonia for days to weeks before he passed.

[00:00:26]>> And just weeks before his death, Busch was heard over radio during a race asking for a doctor and a shot. Health officials say that that was likely the time period that he would have needed to be hospitalized in order to fight the infection that later killed him.

[00:00:41]>> Joining us now is our chief legal analyst Colleen Froats. Colleen, when we talk about the duties of the medical team, when they advise something, that's one thing, but can they actually force an an athlete, a driver in this case, to say, "No, you have to go to the hospital. You can't get in the car or the truck?"

[00:00:55]>> Well, I think you got to step back and see what they're advising. That's probably going to be the first step. The And again, this is unfortunate situation. Obviously, um this is all people are suspecting that that would be the logical next step with some type of lawsuit. I say it all the time, we're a litigious society, and not that folks are trying to place blame, but just trying to find some type of closure in situations like this. Typically, closure is ends in a lawsuit. So, so where do you start? It's a wrongful death mixed with some type of medical malpractice claim. And so, wrongful death, I've talked to you guys about it a number of times. Uh duty, breach, causation, damages, right? The the hardest part in this claim is going to be that causation. It's but for But for you failing to do something, in this case, you doctors, this wouldn't have occurred. And then that that that proximate cause is also part of causation. It's that that that you are actually the reason that this happened.

[00:01:46]And so, your negligence, your failure to do this, now caused and led to this occurring. That is always going to be the hardest. Obviously, the damages, when you talk about wrongful death, the worst type of damage. It's not like a broken arm or some injured soft tissue injury. This is the the ultimate worst type of injury that you can have. And so the the causation will be where this will head. So how do you get these type of cases resolved? It's going to be experts. The doctors that will come in and say did this doctor did his team of doctors use the typical standard of care? Not did did he follow whatever care was the was the proper care provided? Did they advise him properly that this is what you're dealing with?

[00:02:21]This is the steps that you should take and this will give you the result that you want to get. If the if the advice wasn't given, if the proper procedure wasn't given, regardless if he failed to adhere to it or not, that's going to be the first step is did they give the proper advice to treat what he was dealing with?

[00:02:37]>> So it sounds like his wife is not out of the gate pursuing this on her own. She's having friends and other people urging her to do this. Does this realistically seem like this could be a case uh that that will come together?

[00:02:49]>> I mean you obviously have to go through discovery, you'd have to go through the depositions and interrogatories, you'd have to find out looking at communications. I mean he was in a race the week before he passed away. They talked about him talk asking for some type of shot. So there was obviously a time frame that he had already been battling with this. You'd want to see what kind of communication was his doctor having with him and I would assume he had a team of doctors and individuals that had communicated with him over that time frame to be advising him as you mentioned to maybe not race, to maybe take a step back because these are the types of things where you would need some type of medical care to be able to fight this. And and as I mentioned and if it ultimately went to trial, that's what you would have. You'd have experts on one side saying the standard of care was followed. You'd have experts on the other side saying no, the standard of care was not followed and then you'd have to have a jury of your peers determining if they understand and believe what the standard of care actually is.

[00:03:40]>> And we know Khaleef that medical malpractice is very hard to to win, right? If you're at a big hospital, you have a lot of protections. What are the protections for a perhaps a team doctor where they're not perhaps associated with a big hospital? Do they still have the same sort of protections? Is it just as difficult?

[00:03:56]>> The protections is going to be the standard of care. And so, while we filing a lawsuit against a massive hospital will be a David versus Goliath because they have unlimited resources, right? Um, but going against a just an individual doctor or a team doctor that's not connected to a hospital is still going to be hard because fighting the standard of care is going to be the largest hurdle and it I won't say it leans heavily towards defense, but it's going to be you're going to have to find an expert that shows that this doctor or team of doctors drastically deviated from what the standard of care was. Not just okay, they slightly turned, but they're this is what the standard of care is and you went the entire different way. If you're able to prove that as a plaintiff, you can be successful. But mostly, the defense will bring in their own experts to say, well, the standard of care is here and they were here, which is still within that guidelines of what the standard of care should be.

[00:04:45]>> Khalif, again, we're talking about it and it's a tragedy that we're even talking about his death. How big could this get? Because you're going after a team of doctors, but could NASCAR be involved saying, you as a league, you have oversight ability to know if the drivers are not possibly in peak medical condition, what is your duty to make sure that they don't get behind the wheel of a car?

[00:05:01]>> I It won't wouldn't fall into the medical malpractice aspect of it, but it could contribute to it the wrongful death aspect of it. And so, they would potentially be a named party if this is again down the road, if this is a route that the family wanted to take, that there could be a potential avenue for there to what processes in place do you have to ensure that your drivers are up to medical standards to be able to even be there.

[00:05:25]But they would have also had to contributed to the harm. While I think they would have a duty in in the potential breach of the duty, the causation aspect for them would be extremely limited if zero. And so, even if they're named party, I don't think it would be successful against them.

[00:05:39]>> All right, our chief legal analyst Khalif Rhodes weighing in on that. Thank you.

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