Anthony Cashman, owner of prominent Glastonbury-based advertising agency Cashman & Katz LLC, has withdrawn his lawsuit seeking to block Attorney General William Tong’s office from obtaining his personal and business financial records.
Court documents filed Thursday show Cashman and his firm voluntarily dismissed the case against the Office of the Attorney General and eight financial institutions without costs to any party.
The withdrawal came just two weeks after the lawsuit was filed, and ahead of a preliminary hearing that had been scheduled for Nov. 6.
The dismissal ends Cashman’s legal challenge to the subpoenas issued by Tong’s office in early October as part of an investigation into possible violations of Connecticut’s False Claims Act.
“The action was withdrawn by mutual consent of the parties,” said Kenneth A. Votre, Cashman’s attorney from Votre & Associates in East Haven, in an email Friday morning.
It’s unclear whether Tong is still seeking the financial records. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Hartford Business Journal.
The eight banks named in the lawsuit were: American Express, Capital One, Citizens Bank, Citibank, M&T Bank, Webster Bank, KeyBank and Santander Bank.
In the suit, filed in Hartford Superior Court, Cashman argued that Tong’s subpoenas were “fishing expeditions” that violated Connecticut banking privacy laws and constitutional due process protections.
The subpoenas sought nearly seven years of financial records — from Jan. 1, 2018 to present — including bank statements, canceled checks, loan applications and safe-deposit-box records for both Cashman and his advertising firm.
Cashman’s complaint said that no formal allegation or legal proceeding existed involving him or his business, and that there was no “factual predicate” to justify the intrusion into their financial privacy.
The withdrawal filing does not explain why Cashman decided to drop the legal challenge.