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Former partners in life and business Annette Presley and Malcolm Dick have a date set for a courtroom showdown.
A dispute between the CallPlus founders, centring on a new venture called 2Talk, is set to be heard in the High Court on November 9.
Dick has restructured 2Talk's
share register to ensure the dispute will be a head-to-head battle between himself and Presley - rather than involving his other business partners.
The 2Talk phone business was formed last year by Dick and the other CallPlus directors and shareholders, but excludes Presley.
2Talk offers voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phone calling which, in documents filed in the High Court at Auckland in July, Presley claims is in competition with services of CallPlus.
The court documents detail an application to bring a derivative action, a shareholder or director of a company taking court action on behalf of the company, against Dick and CallPlus chief executive and director Martin Wylie for breaching their fiduciary duty by establishing 2Talk in competition with CallPlus.
The documents claim Dick and Wylie placed themselves in a position of conflict by starting a company offering services that CallPlus currently offers or might offer in the future.
At the time, Presley claimed several CallPlus staff had worked for 2Talk and the use of the CallPlus billing system has allowed the company to become quickly established. General manager of Slingshot Mark Callander, CallPlus chief technology officer Adrian Dick and lawyer Geoffrey Cone, who are shareholders of CallPlus and were originally shareholders of 2Talk, are also named in the legal filings.
However in early September the shareholding structure of 2Talk was changed, with all the shareholders and directors resigning their positions with the exception of Dick. He is now the sole remaining director with a company jointly-owned by Dick and Adrian Dick, Maldotcom Ltd, as the only shareholder.
Dick said yesterday the company shareholding restructure was a direct result of the legal action.
"We decided we didn't want everyone to be individually sued so it is easiest if they just sued me," Dick said "It's such a nonsensical case anyway I just didn't want to get all of our staff involved in protracted negotiations. "
He said shareholding of 2Talk would be reviewed after the matter had been settled.
Presley last year split publicly with husband and business partner Dick.
Her departure from day-to-day running of the company to "pursue new opportunities" was announced in a press release while she was in Fiji. When contacted by reporters, Presley denied she was leaving.