Post Wrestling and Wrestlenomics’ Brandon Thurston reported that the shareholder plaintiffs filed a motion this week asking the Delaware Chancery Court to sanction the defendants, including McMahon, WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque, and WWE President Nick Khan, over allegations of the destruction of relevant evidence. This evidence allegedly destroyed includes Signal messages and McMahon’s handwritten notes in relation to WWE’s sale to Endeavor. The plaintiffs are seeking adverse inferences in regards to the sanctions that would allow the judge at the anticipated trial to assume that the missing evidence would have been unfavorable to the defendants responsible for the loss.
In the motion filing, it is alleged that McMahon, Khan, Levesque, and non-defendant former executives Stephanie McMahon and Brad Blum failed to preserve communications despite multiple notices from WWE’s legal team to do so. Thurston reported that under Delaware law, parties subject to a litigation hold are required to preserve potentially relevant communications once litigation is reasonably anticipated. The filing also characterized Khan as “spearheading” communications on the messaging app Signal, which allows users to time messages to auto-delete. Khan is also alleged to have deleted conventional text messages, which is claimed to have included merger discussions and the investigation of alleged misconduct by McMahon.
The motion filing also contained a new factual allegation that was previously not made pubic. This reportedly was Vince and Stephanie McMahon and Khan had met with Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and President Mark Shapiro on December 13, 2022. This would be a few weeks before McMahon had exercised his controlling interest in WWE, returned to the company, and immediately pushed to explore a sale or merger.
Unsealed filings this past December revealed records showing McMahon and Emanuel in communication throughout the Summer of 2022, which would be after McMahon’s resignation from WWE at the time. In the filing, Khan’s deleted text messages are alleged to have also included discussions with Emanuel in March of 2023 during the time WWE and Endeavor negotiated the merger deal. Thurston reported that attorneys for Khan had stated in a written response filed earlier in the case that he “has no recollection of the particular content of any deleted messages” that the plaintiffs had identified in discovery materials.
The case is expected to go to trial in June.
