Slipknot's Corey Taylor and Shawn "Clown" Crahan have formally responded in court to Chris Fehn's lawsuit and they are asking the judge to throw the case out of court.
Fehn claimed the band was keeping money from him, setting up corporations that he was not aware of. Fehn had since been dismissed from the band, even though the statement has since been pulled from the band's website. Frontman Corey Taylor has publicly said he and his band are being wrongfully accused.
In a new development, The Blast reports that Taylor's and Crahan's lawyers are claiming that Fehn filed the lawsuit in the wrong court. Fehn filed in New York, and the band contends none of their contracts were executed in New York, nor were any of their albums recorded in the state. They declared that other than playing live gigs while on tour, "Crahan and Taylor simply have no presence in New York." Because of this, they are asking the judge to throw out the case.
Slipknot's management has already tried to get the case thrown out but the request was rejected.
Last month, Corey Taylor did with Vulture, where Taylor claimed that the band splits all their revenue equally.
What kind of work goes into keeping friendships and business partnerships alive that long when there are nine people involved?
“The great thing about the business part of it is that because we’re from Iowa, it all makes sense. You do the work, you get paid. That’s straight-up it. We split merch equally. We split live equally. We do everything equally. And if we’re all working toward the same thing, then it just all makes sense. We’re always taking care of each other. Even though we’re older now, our reasons for making music and continuing to do this are still the same. It’s one of those things that, if our reasoning for doing this had changed, the band probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. But — and obviously I can’t speak for everybody in the band — I know the OGs that are here are all still trying to just make the best music that we can. So we take care of each other.”
This would seemingly go against everything the Fehn lawsuit is claiming, with the money issues and the different corporations created. Although, Taylor didn't specifically say they split music/publishing royalties equally.
Earlier this year, one of Fehn's attorneys, Joel B. Rothman, appeared on Rock Feed and alleged that Slipknot wouldn't even let Fehn hit the studio until signing a new, unfavorable deal that treated him like "a second-class citizen"
He was presented with a very onerous take-it-or-leave-it, you're-not-an-equal-member-of-the-band-type proposal. And I'm not gonna go into the details of it, but let me put it this way. If you had spent 20 years of your life devoted to an enterprise like Slipknot, where you had given your heart, your soul, your sweat, your blood, your tears to making the band the best it could be the way that so many of its fans love, and then you were told you were a second-class citizen here.
Fehn's lawyer cited a conflict of interest with the band's managers also personally representing Taylor and Crahan:
"What appears to have been going on is that management for the band appears to have been doing two things. Number one, representing individual members of the band while representing the band as a whole where their loyalties to individual members interfere with their ability to represent the whole band, especially if members of the band aren't being treated equally. So we noticed that going on. And we also noticed that information about the band and the band's activities was being withheld by management from some band members, like Chris, but not from others. And as a result of that, we looked not only at whether Slipknot, the group, wasn't being fair to Chris but whether Slipknot's business management, Rob Shore's company, whether they weren't being fair to Chris."
We'll keep you posted on any further developments.
