Spire, Chris Gabehart reject Joe Gibbs Racing premise on deleted texts

Spire Motorsports and former Joe Gibbs Racing competition director Chris Gabehart have formally rejected JGR's legal motion seeking adverse inference jury instructions regarding deleted text messages. JGR asked the court to instruct the trial jury to assume Gabehart deleted a seven-message thread with Spire co-owner Jeffrey Dickerson to conceal evidence of trade-secret misappropriation. Gabehart's legal team argued that JGR lacks proof that proprietary secrets were ever shared.

Gabehart stated that he deleted the texts in a panic because they contained an employment offer received while negotiating his departure from JGR. His attorneys emphasized that the messages contained only text and no multimedia files, predating JGR's formal preservation notice by a month. Spire also argued that granting JGR's request would unfairly prejudice the organization ahead of the February trial.