Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 performs at Scotiabank Arena during their final show of the Tour of the Setting Sum in Toronto, on Jan 30.Andrew Lahodynskyj/The Canadian Press
Former Sum 41 manager Greig Nori has filed a $6-million libel lawsuit against the band’s front man and his publisher Simon & Schuster over allegations in Deryck Whibley’s 2024 memoir that Nori coerced him into a non-consensual sexual relationship for several years.
Nori has consistently denied the allegations Whibley made against him in Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell since the book’s publication by the S&S imprint Gallery Books last October, calling them “a lie.” In January, both parties threatened to escalate the dispute into duelling defamation lawsuits.
On Jan. 31, the day after Sum 41’s final concert at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, which marked a long-planned breakup of the band, Nori’s lawyers formally filed a statement of claim with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Then, on Wednesday, lawyers for Whibley filed their own $3-million defamation claim in the same court, arguing that Nori’s denial of his allegations, and his public responses, “are not true and omit material facts about the relationship between the parties.”
The allegations have not been tested in court, and statements of defence have not been filed in either case. S&S declined to comment through its lawyer; Nori’s lawyer did not return comment requests; Whibley’s lawyer deferred to his client’s publicity team, which did not return comment requests.
Walking Disaster’s allegations include that Nori “groomed” and then “pressured” Whibley into a relationship when Whibley was 18 and Nori was 35 – and that it continued for about four years during the late nineties and early 2000s, as Sum 41 rose from high-school band to chart toppers with songs such as Fat Lip and In Too Deep.
Nori’s lawyers write in his statement of claim that Whibley and his publisher ”intentionally placed Greig Nori in a false light in the public eye as a sexual predator.” The allegations, it continues, “caused enormous damage to Nori’s reputation. They have caused him great emotional distress. They have greatly damaged his career.”
Nori, who was the co-front man of the band Treble Charger when he met Whibley in the mid-nineties, acknowledged in the statement of claim that the two had a relationship, but that he was “surprised when Mr. Whibley initiated” it, and that it was consensual.
As the relationship continued, Nori’s statement of claim alleges, “Whibley told Nori that he was proud of the relationship and wanted to tell everyone about it. Nori discouraged Whibley from doing so. The relationship remained a private matter between them.”
Whibley’s new filing, like his book, disputes this characterization: “Mr. Whibley tried to end the relationship with Mr. Nori several times. On each occasion, Mr. Nori became verbally abusive or pressured him to continue the relationship. The pressure to continue the relationship ultimately ended when Mr. Whibley started dating Paris Hilton.”
Whibley also alleged in his book that Nori threatened the band’s career would be “over” if the front man ended their relationship and Nori left his management position. “Any such threat would have made no sense,” Nori’s statement of claim says, saying that he shared Sum 41’s management responsibilities with a professional management company on a 50-50 basis.
Nori’s statement of claim also said that Whibley and S&S gave Nori “no notice” of the allegations against him in the book – “precisely because they knew he would truthfully contradict them.” At the time of Walking Disaster’s publication, S&S declined to outline its legal vetting process for the book.
When The Globe and Mail contacted Nori by phone for comment in early October prior to publishing details about the book, he said “these are false allegations,” adding that the book’s media coverage was the first time he had heard of the allegations. He expanded upon these claims in a written statement later that week.
Whibley’s statement of claim indicates that his legal team served Nori with a libel notice on Oct. 21, after the written public statement denying the allegations in Walking Disaster, and says Nori “has refused to retract or apologize” for it.
“Mr. Nori knew that Mr. Whibley’s accurate recitation of his history with Mr. Nori in the Autobiography would make Mr. Nori look bad,” Whibley’s Feb. 5 filing says. “The Statement was a deliberate attempt to get ahead of and mitigate the consequences to Mr. Nori of the accurate story of his relationship with Mr. Whibley being made public.”
