Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash, his half-brother took the shoe company, and the family litigated for 15 years

Tomáš Baťa died on 12 July 1932 when his Junkers F 13 crashed in fog near Zlín airport, on a business flight to Switzerland. That day his office safe was opened. An envelope addressed to his half-brother, Jan Antonín Baťa, held a written record of an earlier sale: Jan had bought all shares in Baťa a.s. and most of Tomáš's other property for 50 million crowns. After Germany occupied the country in 1939 he negotiated to keep control, then left for the United States. In 1941 the US and Britain blacklisted him, and he settled in Brazil. Tomáš's son, Thomas J. Bata, had moved to Canada in 1939. In 1945 the Czechoslovak state seized the Zlín works. On 3 May 1947 the National Court in Prague sentenced Jan in absentia to 15 years for collaboration. That April, Thomas J. and his mother sued in Zurich, arguing the assets had passed by inheritance, not sale. A parallel case in New York gave Thomas control of the holding company Leader A.G. After about 15 years Jan gave up his claim to the shares for 3 million dollars^†. He died in Batatuba, Brazil, on 23 August 1965. In 1994 the Czech Supreme Court refused to reopen his case. Thomas J. asked again in 2005, and in 2007 the Prague Municipal Court cleared Jan. Thomas J. died in Toronto in 2008. In 2026 Bata is a private family-owned company based in Lausanne, with 5,800 stores in 56 countries and a non-family chief executive.