The Joe Gibbs Racing v. Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports lawsuit was filed in the middle of February and is set to reach trial on February 1 of next year — less than a year after its initial filing.
This doesn’t even include both defendants filing a pair of counterclaims against the plaintiffs.
All of this is to say that everything has been expedited in the name of reaching a resolution prior to the start of 2027 NASCAR Cup Series season. Thus, process and preparation has been a challenge for all three parties over the summer.
During an ordinary intellectual property and corporate espionage lawsuit, there are years that could go by in which both parties meet-and-confer to sort out any number of disputes during fact discovery.
In this case, JGR, Spire and Gibbs have reached numerous agreements but needed a hearing on Thursday at the Charles R. Jonas Federal Building for a discovery conference with magistrate judge David C. Keesler.
Whatever the parties can’t agree to, a magistrate judge will determine for them, thus the hearing on Thursday. Those issues can be reviewed here.
Much of the hearing on Thursday were just procedural discovery issues being hashed out in front of Judge Keesler but there was one new bit of information that had not yet been filed or said within the confines of the court.
Representing Joe Gibbs Racing, attorney Chad B. Walker claimed that Gabehart has continued to have access to JGR information on devices up until June. Gabehart stated he had turned over that information in December when he subjected himself to a digital forensic analysis.
Just to be sure, Judge Susan C. Rodriguez mandated as part of her March Temporary Restraining Order and a Preliminary Injunction in April that Gabehart needed to turn all Joe Gibbs Racing files back over to his previous employer.
At least one JGR file was found on the Spire issued computer that Gabehart briefly used but was taken away in the spring. Since then, Gabehart has worked without a company computer, email address or access to Spire servers.
This has created a bit of a credibility question, even in the eyes of Judge Rodriguez, who has expressed ‘concern,’ over what proprietary information Gabehart may have used in his role as Chief Motorsports Officer at Spire this season.
At the same time, Joe Gibbs Racing has yet to provide evidence of that information making its way into Spire Motorsports car setups this season, which is what the trial itself and these discovery motions were about on Thursday.
One of the motions covered by the parties and Judge Keesler regarded metadata that could provide insight on when Gabehart accessed any of the Joe Gibbs Racing information he had in his possession.
What Spire and Gabehart seeks
In a bit of an aside, Spire Motorsports attorney Lawrence J. Cameron stated to the court that ‘at a certain point,’ their party wants ‘a definitive list’ of what trade secrets are being litigated.
Cameron stated that JGR continues to site on a weekly basis a new example of a different trade secret being misappropriated or inappropriately used by Gabehart. He wants a court order from Judge Rodriguez to force JGR to state what trade secrets are being pursued and to litigate those.
To wit, Cameron said it would be ‘prejudiced’ to continue piling on new examples in the months, weeks and days leading up to the start of the trial.
Representing Joe Gibbs Racing, Tory Ian Summey said they are still finding more examples of misappropriated and potentially inappropriately used information on a daily basis – including these new allegations of data Gabehart had access to through June.
Judge Keelser asked Summey ‘when does everyone get to know what this is about,’ and Summey says the expedited trial is what makes this such an unorthodox process.
Representing Spire, attorney Troy C. Homesley said there may be some things in Gabehart’s ‘brains’ that Gibbs will try to claim as trade secrets. In a previous hearing Homesley has pointed out that JGR can’t expect Gabehart to get a lobotomy to forget everything he has learned in nearly two decades of high-level racing.
That is, of course, looking past the proprietary items from JGR that Gabehart took photographs of and/or stored in his personal devices.
As part of its discovery motions, Spire is seeking the full OEM agreement between Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota to determine if any proprietary information actually belongs to Toyota and not JGR – and thus is not part of this litigation.
It also seeks this information to instructively deconstruct JGR’s damages claims leading up to the trial.
Gabehart attorney Anna Claire Tucker is asking for this same information for the same reasons but also is adamant that this isn’t trade secreted since TRD also has a similar agreement with Legacy Motor Club and 23XI Racing.
So far, Toyota and Gibbs are both objecting to this, and it’s something the court intends to rule on by Monday. Representing Toyota, attorney Nathaniel James Pencook says they are willing to provide part of the OEM agreement but not all of it.
Pencook says this is a matter of protecting proprietary information contained within those documents.
Attorney Cameron, again representing Spire, also said he wants ‘documents sufficient to show’ what Gabehart’s duties were as competition director at Joe Gibbs Racing. He wants this to combat JGR’s claims that Gabehart is continuing to do that while at Spire in his Chief Motorsports Officer role.
Tucker also wants this information on behalf of her client, Gabehart. She also wants the OEM agreement with Toyota to provide guidance on what Gabehart’s duties were as competition director to better defend the allegations that he’s doing the same thing at Spire.
Pencook is reluctant to even produce these documents because once someone sees it, even if in a ‘clean room,’ the contents of the whole document cannot be unlearned and that would be costly to Toyota.
Tucker also said she wants additional emails and communications from Toyota executives president Tyler Gibbs, general manager Jack Irving and engineering manager Slugger Labbe for the aforementioned reasons but also anything that could be instructive about what knowledge they had about the non-compete clause and contract breach that is also a claim made against Gabehart.
Representing Toyota, Pencook says that an initial search for documents containing all the pertinent names pulled up 2,000 hits and that going through them all would be an expensive, undue burden for the manufacture.
Tucker disagreed and argued that ‘2000 hits shows how relevant these communications could be.’
Pencook also objected to the undue burden of producing any of these 2000 hits because the proprietary data in question belongs to JGR and not Toyota. Tucker and Cameron both disagreed with this, referencing how close the two work together, with Toyota executives having offices in the Gibbs race shop in Huntersville, North Carolina.
Even Judge Keesler pushed back on Pencook claiming that Toyota was largely a party uninterested in the results of this litigation.
On the other hand, both Spire and Gabehart’s attorneys have argued that Toyota was so involved in this process that the manufacturer and Coach Joe Gibbs coordinated the lawsuit together.
Pencook read aloud in court part of a sealed deposition of Coach Gibbs loosely quoted below:
Q: Did you speak with anyone from TRD before filing suit
A: Yes
Q: Who?
A: Tyler Gibbs
Q: Why?
A: This will be a major story. It will be in the press. I wanted to let them know.
To wit, Pencook read this exchange to counter the defendants, by saying Joe Gibbs only reached out to Tyler Gibbs (no relation) as ‘a professional courtesy and not a requirement.’ Pencook said that Tyler Gibbs said he understood and when asked if Coach Gibbs asked for or received Toyota’s blessing to sue Gabehart, Coach Gibbs said ‘no,’ he did not.
JGR wants Spire setups
To prove its claims, Joe Gibbs Racing is asking the court to compel Spire to produce both its 2025 and 2026 set-ups to date, convinced there will be signals that Gabehart is using information he learned in his new role.
Judge Keesler pushed back on this, asking ‘does this not feel very intrusive?’ Joe Gibbs Racing also wants Spire to produce notes and recording from various competition, driver debriefs or crew chief meetings from over the course of the season.
While Spire has produced notes from one meeting, saying that recordings do not exist of any other, JGR is asking the court to compel that information instead. It also wants no more than seven deposition interview hours with key witnesses to follow-up on things learned through the discovery process over the summer.
Representing JGR, attorney Walker said his clients would produce their 2025 set-ups if Spire produced the 2025 and 2026 set-ups.
In response, representing Spire, attorney Cameron said such a request ‘is overly broad’ and expensive. And that doing all of this will push the trial process beyond the February 1 date that Judge Rodriguez has scheduled the trial by jury to begin.
Further, Spire does not want to produce its 2026 set-ups in the midst of racing for the 2026 championship this season, with both teams having cars in the playoffs.
Judge Keesler will have to rule on this matter by Monday as well.
Walker was also very adamant on Thursday that it would be ‘unacceptable’ to reach the end of the scheduled discovery process but having to stop short of everything it requires purely because of the schedule.
Spire and Gabehart wants JGR to summarily define what this lawsuit is very specifically going to be about so all parties can begin to prepare for the trial — a process that includes expert reports and depositions, settlement mediation and then, if a settlement cannot be reached, a two-week trial at the start of February.
Hendrick Motorsports involvement
Hendrick Motorsports asked the court for a chance to speak at a hearing and that was granted, with C. Bailey King, Jr. appearing as an ‘interested non-party’ to the lawsuit.
“Hendrick shares its crown jewels with Spire,” King said. “So our interest here is to protect our proprietary information.”
As it turns out, much of Hendrick’s concerns have been settled and negotiated in the days leading up to King appearing before the court.
Joe Gibbs Racing has withdrawn its efforts to get any communications from Hendrick Motorsports that would include references to its most protected proprietary information. JGR will not seek anything that has to do with Hendricks’s most proprietary competition information.
JGR has also agreed to allow Hendrick to review and redact files that contain such information before it makes its way over to JGR’s attorneys.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
– The Motorsport.com Team
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
