As part of the ongoing Joe Gibbs Racing v Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports lawsuit, fact discovery is currently taking place and includes the pursuit of a text message conversation between Gabehart and Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson that both individuals deleted from their phones.
JGR is suing its former competition director and crew chief, and a rival organization, over allegations that Gabehart illegally misappropriated trade secrets and confidential data while transitioning his employment status.
Specifically, Spire has been accused of knowing and encouraging Gabehart to misappropriate proprietary information to the benefit of their new working relationship. Gabehart was hired as Spire’s Chief Racing Officer in February.
Joe Gibbs Racing is also arguing in court that Gabehart is in multiple violations of his employment and separation agreements. Both defendants have argued their innocence in court and continue to maintain that status approaching a trial scheduled to begin in January.
As part of the discovery process, Joe Gibbs Racing is pursuing the contents of those deleted text messages from the cellular network providers. The two parties have agreed upon ground rules for the retrieval and review of those conversations before they are entered into the record.
Those rules are outlined below:
- Privilege Review Before Access. If a wireless carrier produces text message content responsive to any subpoena served in this litigation, the receiving party will refrain from reviewing the content of the text message content until the opposing party’s counsel has been provided a one business-day opportunity to conduct a privilege review and identify any privileged communications in the text message content. Within one business day of receiving the text message content, the reviewing party’s counsel will promptly notify the receiving party of any privilege designations as to text message content, after which the receiving party may review and produce to all parties the remaining non-privileged text message content.
- Inadvertent Disclosure of Privileged Communications. If, during review of non-privileged text message content produced by wireless carries in response to subpoenas served int his litigation, a party believes it has encountered a communication that may be subject to the opposing party’s attorney-client privilege, that party will immediately cease review of the communication, flag it for the opposing party’s counsel, and refrain from further review or dissemination of the flagged communication until the privilege issue has been resolved.
- Nothing in this Joint Stipulation limits any party’s ability or right to immediately review
and produce to all parties non-text message content produced by wireless carriers in
response to subpoenas served in this litigation.
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