Former tyre king Bob Jane is facing legal battles with his estranged son, Rodney Jane, causing delays to the planned insurance float of his new company. He had teamed up with famous smash repair businessman Tony Murdaca as they strive for boosted competition in the multi-billion dollar repair industry covering motor vehicles.
According to Insurance Business, Jane is still legally forbidden in using his name to set up a new business. He was only able to rebrand his company with Murdaca, renaming it from Bob Jane Integrity Insurance to Integrity Insurance Australia. Furthermore, Jane and Murdaca will be sitting on an advisory committee.
Murdaca stated that they have put the name aside now as Jane only wanted to be an investor in the brand. Moreover, Jane wanted to give them some advice as they can't float or run the business for now, Australian Financial Review reported.
"Bob's an investor of the company, endorsing what we're doing, and he's not a director at this stage. He'll probably come to the advisory board once we resolve this," Murdaca added.
It will be remembered that Rodney Jane, Bob Jane's estranged son, won a court order before that has resulted to prohibiting his father to trade under his own name. Thus in 2013, Bob Jane paid $3 million-worth of fines for breaching the order, said Sydney Morning Herald. The younger Jane, who is also the chief executive of Bob Jane T-Mart, explained that they owned the trademark and thus, his father can't use it.
"Maybe he's [Bob] doing it for fun, maybe it's for real, I don't know ... but he knows how to play the trademark game," Rodney Jane added.
For the former race car driver, he said he will not back off and will continue to fight for his right to use his name, defending that he is only an investor of the company that other people have set up. Thus, it is not valid for Rodney Jane to attack the company.
