JGR’s Spire Lawsuit Takes Another Turn as Chris Gabehart Fights Deleted Texts Allegation

Joe Gibbs Racing’s legal battle with Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports is heading toward another courtroom showdown, with seven missing text messages now at the center of the dispute.

JGR wants jurors in the February trial to be allowed to infer that Gabehart deleted the conversation to conceal damaging evidence. But Gabehart and Spire argue that the request asks the court to assume wrongdoing without proof. The latest filings arrive just days after a hearing raised fresh questions about Gabehart’s work at Spire and the boundaries of JGR’s trade-secret protections.

JGR is asking the court to let jurors consider whether Chris Gabehart deleted messages with Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson to conceal information relevant to its trade-secret claims, as reported by Matt Weaver. The request adds another dispute to the lawsuit that began after Gabehart left his competition director role at JGR and joined Spire as chief motorsports officer.

JGR alleges that Gabehart took confidential material from his former employer and could be using protected information or methods at his new organization. Gabehart and Spire dispute key parts of the case, including whether JGR has demonstrated that its trade secrets were shared or used at Spire.

The latest motion centers on a seven-message text conversation between Gabehart and Dickerson that Gabehart deleted on November 15, 2025. JGR wants the judge to allow an adverse-inference instruction. This procedure would permit jurors to conclude that the missing messages contained information damaging to the defendants. Such an instruction would not establish that the messages proved misconduct, but it could influence how jurors interpret the missing evidence when considering JGR’s claims.

Gabehart has said he deleted the conversation after receiving a job offer from Spire while he was still negotiating his departure from JGR. He described panicking over the situation and said the messages concerned the framework of the offer that eventually led him to join Spire. Dickerson also had an automatic deletion setting enabled for his texts, reportedly to manage message volume. JGR attempted to recover the conversation, but efforts involving forensic examinations and the parties’ cellular carriers failed to restore the messages.

Gabehart’s attorney, Cary Davis, strongly opposed JGR’s request, arguing that the team was trying to replace missing evidence with an assumption. His filing stated:

“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.”

The defense maintains that both Gabehart and Dickerson have testified that no JGR proprietary information was shared in the messages. It argues that JGR can question Gabehart about the deletion during trial without receiving a jury instruction that encourages jurors to presume the missing conversation contained proof of trade-secret sharing. The dispute therefore turns not only on why the messages were deleted, but also on whether the circumstances justify allowing the jury to draw an adverse conclusion.

The parties also disagree over when Gabehart should have anticipated litigation and become obligated to preserve potentially relevant evidence. JGR points to photographs Gabehart took of his JGR computer on November 7, arguing that his actions indicated he should have expected a legal dispute.

Gabehart acknowledges taking the photographs but disputes that this alone established that litigation was reasonably foreseeable. JGR sent him a formal cease-and-desist and evidence-preservation letter on December 15, one month after the text conversation was deleted.

Spire has filed its own opposition, arguing that an adverse inference against Gabehart could unfairly affect jurors’ consideration of the separate claims against the organization. The team says JGR has not shown that its documents were distributed at Spire before Gabehart began working there months after the messages were exchanged. Spire also argues that the court should wait until trial to determine whether an adverse inference is appropriate, when the evidence and proposed jury instructions can be considered together.

The deleted-texts dispute follows a hearing earlier this week in which Judge Susan C. Rodriguez considered JGR’s separate push for contempt proceedings over the existing injunction. That order restricts Gabehart from performing competition-director duties at Spire that are similar to the responsibilities he held previously at Joe Gibbs Racing.

During the hearing, JGR pointed to Gabehart’s attendance at multiple competition meetings and his contributions to processes it considered part of his former role. Gabehart and Spire challenged those examples as insufficient to establish a violation. The judge did not issue a ruling on the contempt request or JGR’s push to expand the injunction.

Together, the disputes raise a central question in the case: where does general racing knowledge end and protected competitive information begin? JGR argues that Gabehart’s access to its internal material and methods threatens its competitive advantage. Gabehart and Spire contest the extent to which his work crosses the court-ordered boundaries, while the parties continue to disagree over what information qualifies as a trade secret.

The court has yet to decide whether jurors will receive the adverse-inference instruction JGR seeks. Gabehart and Spire want the request denied or postponed until a fuller trial record is available.

With the February trial approaching, the missing messages have become another contested issue in a case that could turn on how the court distinguishes evidence of alleged misconduct from assumptions about what the unavailable messages might have contained.

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