Liam Payne’s friend Roger Nores withdraws defamation lawsuit against singer’s dad
Nores sued Geoff Payne for $10 million over sworn declarations made to an Argentine prosecutor following the singer's death
By Tomás Mier
Liam Payne‘s friend has pulled his defamation lawsuit against the late singer’s father, Geoff Payne. Roger Nores — who was acquitted of an involuntary manslaughter charge in Payne’s death investigation — asked the court to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit on Wednesday, Rolling Stone can confirm.
In his original filing, Nores had alleged that Geoff made false and defamatory statements about him in sworn declarations to an Argentine prosecutor investigating Liam’s death, causing him damages of over $10 million.
Speaking to Rolling Stone at the time, Nores said Geoff “need[ed] to backtrack on his statements,” which led to his original charge. Now, in an email sent to Richard Bray, Liam’s estate attorney, Nores writes that Geoff “doesn’t need to apologise.”
“I’ll always remember when [Geoff] came to me the first night at the ranch after I had picked them up at the airport, how he asked me to promise I would never give up on Liam, no matter what,” Nores wrote in the email, obtained by Rolling Stone. “I kept that promise right until the end, and it was pretty hard.”
“In spite of how everything turned out and Geoff saying in his statement to the police [that] ‘this is all Roger’s responsibility,’” he added, “I would have done this 100 times over because I loved Liam with all my heart and I miss him everyday.”
A lawyer representing Geoff in the Florida case and attorneys representing Liam’s estate did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
In his original lawsuit, Nores claimed that the father of the One Direction star made “false” and “misleading” statements and omitted information in his “sworn declarations” to Argentine officials while characterizing Nores’ involvement in Liam’s life. Although the statements made by Geoff were given in another country, the lawsuit claimed that they were “accessed by persons in the Palm Beach County/Florida” area and caused injury in said places.
Nores had claimed that Geoff’s statements impacted him and his reputation in “mega proportions with extensive damages.”
In a response to the lawsuit dated Jan. 10, Liam’s estate declined to retract the declarations and accused Nores of “seeking to interfere with a police investigation by pressuring [Geoff] to change his evidence,” adding that they would “bring his actions to the attention of the Argentinian authorities.”
Liam’s estate had also slammed the lawsuit’s intent of donating proceeds of the lawsuit damages to Liam’s son as “pointless,” adding that the lawsuit causes Liam’s child with Cheryl Cole more “irreparable damage.”
Nores was acquitted of an involuntary manslaughter charge last month, despite a denied appeal from the prosecutor overseeing the case. The new update comes several months after Rolling Stone published an investigation into the tragedy of Liam, including a statement from his ex-fiancée, Maya Henry, breaking her silence on his death. Liam died in mid-October after falling from the third-floor balcony of the CasaSur Palermo hotel in Argentina.