The couple, within the midst of a divorce, have traded allegations in courtroom filings in Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom since final fall, however reviews began to spill out onto social media this week. The Los Angeles Instances printed what seems to be the primary story concerning the allegations on Tuesday.
In her petition for a home violence restraining order, which was authorised, Johnson painted a grim image of her husband and enterprise accomplice. In her filings, she alleged that she has been “unable to go anyplace with out his permission.” She says she found that Aghajanian had visited prostitutes. She alleged he prompted her bodily and emotional hurt.
Johnson additionally claimed Aghajanian had abused and/or killed as much as 14 animals, in response to courtroom paperwork. The couple had three canines — Pancho, Javi and Spud — when Johnson requested a restraining order on Nov. 1.
“Previously, Will and I’ve had cats that mysteriously ended up dying, together with one in 2017 who I took to a shelter when she grew to become critically wounded in a single day — the shelter informed me she had been critically abused, however Will denied it was him. I believed him,” Johnson wrote in her submitting.
Johnson alleged that final yr, after the couple was given one other kitten, Aghajanian “began calling him ‘Coyote Bait’/ mentioned ‘we had been going to feed him to the coyotes,’” in response to courtroom papers.
“At some point I used to be within the bathe after I heard a really loud yelp and got here out to search out the kitten with big lacerations and an abscess on its head,” Johnson famous within the courtroom submitting. “Will claimed the canine attacked him, and I believed Will, however Will forbade me from taking him to the vet. I used to be suspicious so I requested Will to steer clear of him. However, a number of days later, I caught Will violently shaking the cat late at at [sic] night time, and he died the following day. Will put the useless cat within the trash and insisted on conserving the corpse in the home.”
“I used to be the sufferer of psychological and psychological abuse, so I believed Will when he denied killing these animals — he would insist I used to be loopy for questioning him and inform me to maintain quiet. I now understand Will was torturing and killing these animals,” Johnson wrote within the courtroom filings.
Aghajanian was not out there for remark, however his lawyer mentioned Johnson’s allegations are false. Elyse Margolin mentioned her shopper is an animal lover, not an abuser. Margolin mentioned Johnson’s allegations are a part of an try to take over Horses, a high-profile vacation spot on Sundown Boulevard in Hollywood, in addition to the couple’s forthcoming New York restaurant, Froggy’s, within the West Village. The Los Angeles Instances reported that plans for Froggy’s are on pause through the divorce proceedings.
In his personal request for a restraining order, Aghajanian painted a far completely different image of his relationship with Johnson. He claimed he was the sufferer of Johnson’s longtime bodily and psychological abuse, accusing his spouse of repeatedly kicking, hitting and shoving him, and on two events, burning his arms with sizzling kitchen utensils. He alleged that she threatened to kill him and threatened to kill herself as a method of controlling him. His submitting included declarations from his mom in addition to a pal and co-worker who claimed to witness Johnson hitting him.
Aghajanian denied Johnson’s allegations of animal abuse and alleged she was the one who threatened and mistreated their pets. “She falsely accuses me of issues she has completed or that she has threatened to do to me or my pets,” he wrote in courtroom filings. He alleged that she introduced a kitten into their residence, the place there have been three canines who didn’t get together with cats, “leading to many squabbles between the pets together with bloody bodily accidents.”
The incident by which Johnson accused Aghajanian of shaking a cat is inaccurate, he claimed. In his model, she discovered the kitten lifeless in the course of the night time, and woke him. “I then took the kitten from her and gently shook it to see if it had been nonetheless alive,” he wrote. “I didn’t do that out of anger or hate as Liz portrays.”
He shared with the courtroom textual content messages by which Johnson mentioned she would kill Pancho, their canine. In a single, she mentioned Aghajanian will probably be consuming “Pancho oil drugs.” In a number of messages, she claimed to have killed the animal.
Aghajanian mentioned Johnson was utilizing the restraining order and allegations to show their restaurant companions and employees, in addition to his pals, in opposition to him. Johnson alleged that his spouse, after submitting for the restraining order, known as the restaurant’s employees for a gathering by which she known as him a “intercourse addict” and an “animal abuser.” He additionally accused Johnson of hacking into his e mail accounts and iCloud account, in addition to the e-mail accounts of varied unnamed enterprise companions, to hunt damaging data.
He mentioned he waited to reply to her preliminary allegations as a result of he hoped to reconcile, however claims that he by no means heard again from her. He subsequently filed for divorce in January, after which made his personal request for a restraining order, which the courtroom denied. Margolin, his lawyer, didn’t know why it was denied, and courtroom information aren’t clear on that.
He additionally denied her allegations that he managed her, saying she was the one who managed their monetary property and many of the “operational areas of our day by day marriage, and enterprise.”
Neither Johnson nor her lawyer responded to makes an attempt to succeed in them.
In an announcement on Instagram, the Horses workforce wrote, “Will Aghajanian has been on a go away of absence from Horses as of November 2022, and since then he has not been concerned within the day-to-day operations of the restaurant. Underneath the steering of Chef Liz, our unbelievable back and front of home groups are working to repeatedly make Horses what she had all the time meant it to be — a spot of pleasure and celebration.” The assertion concluded by saying Horses would don’t have any additional remark.
Johnson and Aghajanian met greater than a decade in the past whereas they had been staging at Noma, chef René Redzepi’s celebrated New Nordic restaurant that may shut subsequent yr. Based on a declaration from Amanda Weathersby, Aghajanian’s mom, the couple was married over the cellphone in 2021 whereas they had been residing with Aghajanian’s mother and father. The couple purchased a home in Los Angeles final yr.
Horses opened in September 2021, with a kitchen staffed not by a single chef, however by 4 of them, not together with one dedicated to pastry. It was a direct hit with diners and critics. The Los Angeles Instances wrote, “Instantly it feels very a lot of Los Angeles whereas additionally asserting its personal creativity; that’s a mix, when pulled off efficiently, this metropolis values.” The New York Instances famous that the issue of securing a reservation “could make Horses really feel faraway and inaccessible, which is a disgrace, as a result of when you do get in and sit down, ideally in entrance of the roast rooster, it may be pure deliciousness and heat.”
The restaurant even appeared to outlive an argument final yr when Eater reported that Ken Friedman, the disgraced proprietor behind the Noticed Pig and different once-fashionable eating places in New York, had helped Horses safe its preliminary lease. His help got here the identical yr Friedman agreed to a settlement with 11 former staff who accused him of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation. There was some dispute between Friedman and Horses’s house owners and traders over whether or not he was a silent accomplice, sharing within the income from the L.A. restaurant.
This isn’t the primary time controversy has enveloped Johnson and Aghajanian. In 2020, the couple was immediately ousted from the Catbird Seat, an acclaimed restaurant in Nashville, not lengthy after Aghajanian and Johnson had been named semifinalists within the Rising Star Chef of the 12 months class for the James Beard Awards.