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Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 performs during a concert in Quebec City on July 15, 2022.Amy Harris/The Associated Press
Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley and the band’s ex-manager Greig Nori have filed defamation claims against each other in Ontario court after the pop-punk vocalist alleged in his memoir that Nori had sexually abused him.
Whibley’s book, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell, was published by Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books last October. In it, he alleges that Nori pressured him into a non-consensual sexual relationship in the band’s early days, which he kept hidden even from his bandmates.
Nori immediately denied the allegations when they began surfacing in media coverage of the book prior to its publication. He further denied the allegations after retaining a defamation lawyer, calling them “a lie.” Whibley then posted a social-media video encouraging Nori to take his counter-allegations to court.
Nori began that process Jan. 3 with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, seeking more than $6-million in damages for “libel, breach of confidence, intrusion upon seclusion, wrongful disclosure of private facts, and placing the plaintiff in a false light” from both Whibley and his publisher Simon & Schuster over the allegations in Walking Disaster.
Representatives for Nori, Whibley and Simon & Schuster did not immediately respond to comment requests Thursday.
At the time of Walking Disaster’s publication, Simon & Schuster declined to outline its legal vetting process for the book. Nori told The Globe and Mail the night before Walking Disaster’s publication he was not aware of the allegations until media coverage of the book began that day.
Whibley retaliated Jan. 7, seeking $3-million in damages from Nori for accusing him of “being a liar,” writing in his own filing that Nori’s denial of Whibley’s accusations in Walking Disaster “were false and/or inaccurate and would tend to lower the reputation of the plaintiff.”
Nori is based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Local news outlet SooToday first reported on the court filings.
Sum 41 was founded in Ajax, Ont., near Toronto in 1996, and numerous members still live in the area. The Sum 41 vocalist wrote that the relationship began in the late 1990s, after Nori, the co-frontman of the band Treble Charger, began to manage the band. Whibley alleges that pressure from Nori left him unable to end the sexual relationship until around the time Sum 41 ended its tour in support of its breakthrough album, All Killer No Filler, about four years later in 2002.
Nori is a key player in nearly half of Whibley’s book. According to Whibley, the pair first met at a Treble Charger concert when Whibley was 16 and Nori, who was then in his mid-30s, agreed to attend an early Sum 41 performance in the mid ‘90s. Shortly after, he became the band’s manager. Only with years of reflection did Whibley, 44, come to recognize the strangeness of their initial friendship, he writes in Walking Disaster.
“Thinking about that smile he gave me when I snuck backstage and met him feels much different now,” Whibley writes.
He alleges Nori first kissed him shortly after he turned 18, in a bathroom at a warehouse party, when the Sum 41 singer was high on ecstasy. Though he initially viewed their kissing and sexual interactions as an “experiment” while he was on drugs, he writes in the book, he would feel “extremely uncomfortable” about it when sober.
In a statement through a lawyer the week of the book’s release, Nori alleged that he and Whibley’s relationship was consensual and initiated by Whibley. “The accusation that I pressured Whibley to continue the relationship is false,” he wrote.
