We recently learned that percussionist Chris Fehn was suing his own band, Slipknot, alleging the band was keeping money from him. This resulted in Fehn being dismissed from the band.
Slipknot frontman Taylor, who along with M. Shawn Crahan, are explicitly named in the suit, has said he is being wrongfully accused of stealing money. We didn't have too many details on what Fehn's allegations were until now.
Metal Injection has read the public court record of the lawsuit summons that Fehn's lawyers filed. Fehn's lawsuit is filed against two different versions of "Slipknot, Incorporated", a New York and a California corporation; Knot Merch LLC, Knot Touring LLC, SK Productions, LLC; Knot Touring LLC, M. Shawn Crahan aka Clown, Corey Taylor and Robert Shore, the band's manager, as well as Shore's law firm, Rob Shore & Associates, Inc.
Fehn is suing for two counts of "breach of fiduciary duty," one count of "breach of implied in fact contract" and one count of "unjust enrichment." You can read the entire document here.
I will try my best to summarize, but I am not a lawyer. I should stress that these are all allegations and claims made by Fehn, and it's very much his side of the story – one that Taylor contends is a misunderstanding. This might not necessarily be the truth and there could be very valid business/tax reasons for the various companies to be set up.
Fehn contends that he trusted Taylor and Crahan to represent him as a partner, and entered into a general partnership with then in 1998. This partnership retained the rights to Slipknot's trademarks. It was a partnership at will – which I looked up and means " a partnership in which the partners have not agreed to remain partners until the expiration of a definite term or the completion of a particular undertaking. In other words, it is a partnership that can be dissolved by any partner at any time without any liability."
He claims he was not made aware of any of the other companies and had no business share or interest in any of these other companies. He contends that the California Slipknot, Incorporated was created in 2003 and that Fehn never agreed to assign Slipknot's trademarks to the new corporation. He was not even aware of the corporation until now.
Fehn contends that Shore and his law firm represented all of the members of the band equally, but based on the suit, Fehn is claiming that Shore acted more favorably to Taylor and Crahan than Fehn.
Fehn contends that Crahan and Taylor also did not act favorably towards their agreed upon partnership and is claiming that the dup enriched themselves out of proportion to the other members of the band. The document does not go into detail as to how they acted unfavorably towards Fehn.
He is asking for an audit of Slipknot's finances to be made. Fehn claims he performed the services asked of him for all of these entities, but feels he was not compensated fairly. Because of this, he is also looking for damages caused by the breach, including interest.
After reading the entire document, a few questions are raised for me. Where did Fehn get his payments from? Did he not notice the corporations they were coming from? How did he just catch on to these other corporations? If I am allowed to speculate, could these all be pass-through companies that then bring the money back to the corporation.
Also, the legal document doesn't specify what the arrangement was in the Slipknot general partnership.
Ultimately, this is all very legal and not metal and just a business argument.
It will be interesting to see how the other members of the band react. Fehn already has one former member backing him up.
[via Rock Feed]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIjtKNh6SOA][/youtube]
