Jun. 19--In a lawsuit filed yesterday, a business partner of Todd English alleged that the celebrity chef had spent lavishly on personal expenses for himself, his wife, and his girlfriend while company loans and rent at Kingfish Hall restaurant in Boston sometimes went unpaid. 

English, who is separated from his wife, denies all allegations, including that he used corporate funds for personal benefit, a spokeswoman said. 

In Suffolk Superior Court, the partner, James Cafarelli, sued on the grounds that his employment contract as president of the firm had been breached and that the company he had formed with English in the late 1990s, Olive Group Corp., has suffered from English's mismanagement. 

Cafarelli and English are the sole shareholders of Olive Group, and English also serves as the company's treasurer, according to the suit. 

Among other things, Cafarelli is seeking back pay and unspecified damages. 

Julie Fox, a spokeswoman for English, said, "Mr. English regrets that a disgruntled employee and minority partner has elected to seek to damage the Olive Group by spreading false allegations." 

Cafarelli's lawyers said the suit was reluctantly filed after English froze Cafarelli out of the company and stopped paying him. 

Both sides claim the suit will have no impact on the day-to-day restaurant operations. 

The suit focuses on four of the 15 restaurants that English is believed to have interests in. 

The four restaurants owned by the Olive Group are: Kingfish Hall, Rustic Kitchen, and Olives in New York and Washington, D.C., Cafarelli's lawyers said. Through ownership arrangements and licensing agreements, English is involved with other restaurants, including the Olives in Charlestown and several Figs restaurants. 

Earlier this year, Boston's Department of Inspectional Services closed English's flagship Olives restaurant in Charlestown twice for sanitation and ongoing construction issues. The restaurant has since reopened. 

In his lawsuit, Cafarelli alleged that the Olive Group had paid out $150,000 over the last year in personal expenses to English, his wife, and his girlfriend. Much of English's expenses came from overseas trips that were "only partially related to Olive's business," the lawsuit alleged. 

Though English gets about $1 million a year in licensing fees for the use of his name at a restaurant at a Las Vegas casino, he has been recently billing the company about $10,000 a month in expenses, the lawsuit claimed. 

Meanwhile, lender Chesapeake Investment Services, has expressed concern about a potential default on $450,000 it is owed by Kingfish Hall, according to the lawsuit. 

Chesapeake also filed suit yesterday against the Olive Group. No details were available and a lawyer for Chesapeake declined to comment. 

According to Cafarelli's attorneys, James L. Rudolph and Jonathon D. Friedmann, English asked Cafarelli in April to prepare a plan to divide company assets, but when Cafarelli offered a proposal, English rejected it and stopped paying him. 

"This is a lawsuit that Jim Cafarelli was reluctant to file," said Rudolph of the Boston law firm of Gargill Sassoon & Rudolph. "But he felt he had no choice." 

Cafarelli seeks $24,111 in back pay and $291,666 in deferred compensation. 

In court papers, he noted that he is a personal guarantor of debt owed by the company of $2.56 million. 

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(c) 2002, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.