Joe Gibbs Racing argued in federal court Thursday that Chris Gabehart and Spire Motorsports, in an effort to improve their team’s performance, conspired to steal proprietary data from one of NASCAR’s most successful organizations.
JGR attorney Tom Melsheimer argued during a preliminary injunction hearing in the Western District of North Carolina that when Gabehart joined rival Spire as its chief motorsports officer, he shared confidential information and trade secrets from his time working for JGR.
“Spire wanted to take his knowledge and take our hard work,” Melsheimer argued in court.
Thursday’s hearing was part of an ongoing lawsuit by JGR against Gabehart, and later amended to include Spire as a defendant, accusing him of sharing confidential information and trade secrets as he was looking to leave his old job to work for Spire, a Cup Series competitor. The suit seeks damages of at least $8 million.
JGR wants Gabehart to be sidelined for 18 months, per a noncompete clause he had in his contract with JGR. Spire attorney Lawrence Cameron argued that since JGR has not paid Gabehart since mid-November, the noncompete clause is negated, making him eligible to work without restrictions at Spire.
Judge Susan C. Rodriguez heard arguments from both sides and considered her decision for 30 minutes before decided to delay issuing an order, saying, “I’m going to take this under advisement and dig my teeth into this. It’s really important to the court to get this right.”
Attorneys for Spire and Gabehart have acknowledged that Gabehart “screwed up” by copying information from JGR but that he later deleted the information and never shared it, per the New York Times. They argued there is no evidence Spire accessed that information, much less used it.
“As we told the court today, it’s really easy to make an allegation, and frankly, it’s been disappointing in this case the way that Joe Gibbs Racing has made these really extreme allegations without backing it up with any actual evidence,” Cameron told reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing.
“At the beginning of this case, JGR alleged that we had stolen their secret sauce — they specifically said Spire knew of or encouraged the stealing of the ‘secret sauce.’ What’s been discussed today, and in court filings, is essentially a spreadsheet with publicly available data. There’s just no evidence to support those allegations against Spire because it didn’t happen.”
Also on Thursday, the judge extended by 14 days a temporary restraining order that allows Gabehart to continue working as the chief motorsports officer for Spire with limited duties.
The order prevents Gabehart from holding the role of competition director that he had at JGR but permits him to work with Spire’s Truck Series, Late Model and Sprint Car teams, plus Andretti Autosport IndyCar.
The sides are set to return to court in April. A trial date has not been set.
Gabehart, 44, worked 13 years at JGR, including a lengthy stretch as Denny Hamlin’s crew chief and more recently as the director of competition. His base salary last year reportedly was $1 million before bonuses.
Motorsport.com reported that a JGR investigation found that Gabehart set up a folder on his computer, shared to his personal cloud storage, that listed team details including salaries and performance reviews of drivers, crew chiefs and pit crews.
JGR alleges that Gabehart looked at those files in the midst of finalizing his departure from the team on the same day he had a meeting with Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson.
JGR is owned by Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs, 85, a three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the Washington franchise. In NASCAR, his drivers have won five Cup Series championships and four Daytona 500s. Gibbs is also a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Spire, formed in 2018, has won just one Cup race.
