In addition to wanting the Western District of North Carolina to allow for contempt of court hearings to proceed against Spire and Chris Gabehart, Joe Gibbs Racing is also seeking sanctions against the latter for text messages deleted that contained a conversation with Jeff Dickerson.
Specifically, JGR is asking the court to allow the trial jury in February to consider an ‘adverse inference’ argument -- meaning the judge can tell those sitting in the box they could assume that texts were deleted to hide evidence potentially damming to the defendants.
Gabehart deleted a seven-message text thread with Dickerson on November 15. At the time, Dickerson had all of his text messages set to automatically delete after a 30-day period, for reasons he said was to manage bulk.
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Joe Gibbs Racing had sought the contents of those messages through the legal discovery process but was unable to get them from either the carriers of Dickerson or Gabehart. For his part, Gabehart says the messages merely contained the framework of the offer that would see him eventually join Spire as Chief Motorsports Officer.
He deleted them because he felt uneasy about receiving the offer while still negotiating his separation from Joe Gibbs Racing. JGR is attempting to prove that Gabehart has used misappropriated trade secrets taken from his final days as competition director in his new role as the right hand man of the Spire Motorsports co-owner, Dickerson.
At this time, Joe Gibbs Racing has yet to show inarguable proof that Dickerson has used trade secrets while under the employ of Spire, while the three parties have yet to agree on what constitutes as trade secrets.
In a Wednesday night filing, Gabehart lawyer Cary Davis says JGR wants to allow the jury to assume the text messages are damming in the face of no other evidence presented to the court thus far.
The italicized text below is taken directly from the filing:
“The Motion’s real purpose is transparent. Having found no evidence that Mr. Gabehart shared JGR proprietary information with Spire—and facing sworn testimony from both Mr. Gabehart and Mr. Dickerson that none was shared—JGR asks the Court to tell the jury to assume such evidence existed, and existed only in seven deleted texts. That is not a remedy for lost evidence; it is a substitute for evidence JGR never had. JGR remains free to cross-examine Mr. Gabehart about the deletion at trial; it is not entitled to have the Court do its persuading for it.”
It is a matter of accepted fact by the court that Gabehart took photographs of numerous trade secreted material or otherwise placed files on his personal drives in November. Joe Gibbs Racing discovered this misappropriation through a forensic analysis of the devices turned over by Gabehart.
For his part, Gabehart has maintained that all trade secrets misappropriated were turned over to JGR or deleted after their discovery. Joe Gibbs Racing is seeking sanctions against Gabehart because litigants are not allowed to delete anything subject to discovery from the moment they suspect they could be involved in a lawsuit.
Gabehart and JGR disagree on the moment he should have suspected litigation.
“First, JGR points to Mr. Gabehart’s act of photographing his JGR computer on November 7 to show that he must have anticipated litigation then. Mr. Gabehart has admitted that he took those photographs and that he should not have. But conduct, even if it is later held to be wrongful, does not trigger the duty to preserve; only reasonably foreseeable litigation does.”
Joe Gibbs Racing first sent Gabehart a ‘cease and desist and preservation’ letter on December 15 -- a month after the texts were deleted. In response, JGR says Dickerson should have reasonably expected litigation the moment the misappropriated information taken from the organization.
Gabehart says, and has shown through his own personal forensics expert, that his cellular carrier confirmed that none of the messages sent to Dickerson contained any multimedia content. They were only texts.
“On November 15, 2025, Mr. Gabehart deleted a seven-message text thread with Spire Motorsports II, LLC (“Spire”) owner Jeffrey Dickerson, the earliest of which concerned the employee-trade understanding Mr. Gabehart had negotiated with Spire on JGR’s behalf, and the last of which conveyed Spire’s offer of future employment. Mr. Gabehart does not hide what he did or why: Uneasy about receiving that offer while still negotiating an amicable exit from JGR, he ‘panicked’ and deleted the thread.”
Gabehart said as much to Joe Gibbs Racing lawyers, and his own, during deposition interviews as well.
In short, the Gabehart camp says allow the court to instruct the jury to assume any other reason the texts were deleted would be improper based on a lack of evidence other than what was disclosed.
“JGR should not be permitted to substitute inferences from texts deleted before any litigation was anticipated for evidence it has never found. JGR may test Mr. Gabehart’s account through cross-examination at trial, and nothing more is needed. The Court should deny the Motion or, alternatively, deny it without prejudice.”
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Spire stated in a separate Wednesday filing that it has nothing to do with Gabehart deleting texts and that Dickerson’s auto delete feature was the only reason his messages were deleted.
Spire also urges the court to be careful allowing the jury to consider an adverse inference on Gabehart, even if it rejects applying the premise to Spire, because that would prejudice those on the box against Spire as well.
The italicized below is from the Spire filing, emphasis theirs.
“Should the Court grant JGR’s motion and provide JGR with its requested relief, it would not only effectively resolve the merits of JGR’s breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets claims as to Gabehart but also its misappropriation of trade secrets claim as to Spire—even though there is NO evidence of any JGR document being disseminated at Spire prior to Gabehart’s employment with Spire, which did not begin until MONTHS after the text message exchanges at issue in the Motion. The Court should not allow JGR’s bid to prevail on its trade secrets claims via jury instructions that spill over into liability against Spire based on Gabehart’s pre-employment conduct.”
Spire also says it is premature with over three months to the trial to issue such an order.
“JGR urges the Court to grant spoliation sanctions on a record that has not fully developed. Without a complete record on which to decide what adverse inference—if any at all—is warranted, the Court should refuse to decide the issue until additional facts have developed.
JGR provides no reason for urgency in ruling on the adverse inference it seeks. Indeed, that is because there is none. Any adverse inference will not be used until trial. The parties at that time will have the opportunity to discuss jury instructions with the Court, only then with the benefit of a more complete record. Because that record is still actively developing, the Court should decline to rule on any adverse inference instructions until trial, at which time the Court will have sufficient information to do so.”
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