The president of Los Angeles’s famed Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles has been ousted by a federal judge who said she doesn’t trust him to run its four bankrupt restaurants “in accordance with the law,” the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Sheri Bluebond said on Wednesday that under the management of President Herbert Hudson, who also founded the chain, Roscoe’s lost a $3.2 million employee discrimination lawsuit, faced immigration law sanctions, underpaid state taxes and kept informal accounting system with missing records. Judge Bluebond said that Hudson also inappropriately transferred money from Roscoe’s operations to his other businesses, returning it only after a court-filed report revealed the transfers to the court. Roscoe’s bankruptcy lawyer Vahe Khojayan didn’t respond to requests for comment on Judge Bluebond’s decision to put new management in charge. At Wednesday’s hearing, he argued that the bankrupt restaurants are profitable — making more than $200,000 a month — diffusing the need for outside leaders. Judge Bluebond rejected that argument.
