Dana White took the stand. Years of executive communications were missing. A federal judge called it a preliminary showing of spoliation. The lesson applies to every organization that sends business messages from a personal phone.
On February 4 and 5, 2026, two of the most powerful executives in professional sports — UFC CEO Dana White and COO Hunter Campbell — sat in a federal courtroom in Nevada and testified about missing text messages. Not a few texts. Years of them. Years of executive-level communications in a case accusing the UFC of using its market dominance to illegally suppress fighter wages were simply gone.
White and Campbell admitted the messages were missing but said they didn't know how the phones had disappeared or even how many phones might be at issue. The federal judge overseeing the case — the same judge who had presided over the prior UFC antitrust settlement that cost the organization $375 million — had already concluded in January 2026 that the fighters had made a preliminary showing of spoliation. By June 2026, the court found that the UFC had not even disclosed basic information about the missing texts, including details about the efforts to retrieve them and the time period they covered.
The UFC's situation is extreme in its visibility — but the underlying problem is not unusual at all. It happens in organizations of every size, in every industry, every day. Business gets done on personal phones. Messages get deleted as a matter of habit. And when litigation arrives, those messages are gone.
In mid-2025, fighter plaintiffs filed a motion for sanctions alleging serious discovery failures, including a claim that only 50 text messages had been produced across a multi-year antitrust matter involving some of the most senior people in the organization. By January 2026, the judge had found a preliminary showing of spoliation from years of missing communications on mobile devices.
At the February 2026 spoliation hearing, UFC executives testified they could not account for what happened to phones used to conduct business and were unaware of how many devices might be missing. By June 4, 2026, the court found the UFC had still not disclosed even basic information about the missing texts — not the time periods covered, not the steps taken to retrieve them. Under FRCP Rule 37(e), if the court ultimately finds the UFC intended to deprive fighters of the information, sanctions could reshape the litigation entirely. The prior antitrust case cost the UFC $375 million. The stakes in the current case are potentially comparable.
The most important principle to understand about text message discovery in 2026 is the one that courts have applied consistently for years: it does not matter whether the message was sent from a company phone or a personal phone. What matters is whether the content relates to business. If it does, it is subject to the same preservation obligations as any other ESI.
This creates a practical problem that most organizations have not fully solved. Employees use personal devices for work communication constantly — not because they are trying to evade discovery, but because it is convenient. A CEO texts a COO from a personal iPhone about a business decision. A manager texts a departing employee about a deal. A compliance officer texts a colleague about a pending investigation. None of these feel like "business records" in the moment. All of them are, legally.
The UFC's situation is complicated by the apparent inability to even account for the missing phones. But the more common version of this problem is simpler and more widespread: phones set to auto-delete texts, employees who left the company and took their devices, litigation holds that covered email but said nothing about personal device communications. Seven states updated their text message preservation laws in 2025 and 2026. Courts across jurisdictions have made clear that auto-delete settings do not excuse a party from the obligation to preserve once litigation is reasonably anticipated.
The device doesn't determine whether a message is subject to discovery. The content does. If you're an executive and the text relates to the business, it belongs in your litigation hold — regardless of which phone you sent it from.
A litigation hold that does not explicitly address personal mobile devices and text messages is incomplete. The UFC case demonstrates what that gap looks like when a court starts asking questions. The fix is not technically complicated — but it requires deliberate action at the beginning of every matter, not as a reaction to a spoliation motion.
Custodian interviews must ask about personal device usage for business communications. Hold notices must explicitly instruct custodians to preserve text messages on all devices — personal and corporate — and to disable auto-delete settings immediately. When custodians hold relevant information on personal devices and are uncooperative, organizations may need forensic collection from those devices, which requires both legal authority and technical capability.
Employee departures are a particular vulnerability. When someone who is a likely custodian in anticipated litigation leaves the organization, their devices leave with them unless specific steps are taken before departure. The window between notice of departure and the employee's last day is often the only opportunity to collect device data defensibly.
The UFC spoliation proceedings are playing out in public, which makes them unusually instructive. Most organizations with mobile device preservation failures never reach this level of visibility — but the underlying failure is the same. A litigation hold that was drafted before smartphones were ubiquitous, or that was copied from a prior matter without review, or that was sent to custodians who did not understand what it required of their personal devices.
At Sovereign Discovery, mobile device and text message preservation is a first-class concern in every matter — not an afterthought. Custodian interviews ask specifically about personal device usage. Hold notices explicitly instruct custodians about text messages. And when collections need to happen from personal devices, we have the forensic capability to do it defensibly. The UFC's situation is unusual in scale. The underlying gap it exposes is not.
Dana White sitting in a federal courtroom explaining missing texts is a dramatic version of a problem that plays out quietly in organizations every day. The messages were sent. Business was discussed. The phones are gone. And when the question arrives — where are the texts? — there is no good answer.
The time to build a defensible text message preservation protocol is before the litigation hold is issued, not after the spoliation motion arrives. The UFC is learning that the hard way. Your organization does not have to.