Judge tosses Curcio’s complaint against Bridgeport bank

BRIDGEPORT — Gus Curcio needs to be more specific.

Curcio — a reputed former member of the Genovese crime family now living in Stratford — filed a complaint in court last year against People’s United Bank alleging the bank had closed dozens of accounts linked to him without warning.

But after a hearing Monday a judge tossed the case, saying he couldn’t grant Curcio’s request for a bill of discovery compelling the bank to disclose more information about why the accounts were closed.

“The petitioner’s complaint for a bill of discovery is deficient in that it does not specify a cause of action or causes of action that the petitioner intends to bring once he obtains the information sought,” Judge John Cordani wrote in a ruling granting the bank’s motion to throw the case out of court. “Without specifying a proposed cause of action, it is impossible to judge whether or not the petitioner has established probable cause.”

The ruling means Curcio, who has served federal prison time for loan sharking and extortion, has 15 days to file a more specific complaint.

Curcio’s lawyer, Jonathan Klein, declined to comment on the case Tuesday.

Since Curcio’s release from prison, he has started numerous enterprises in the area, including bars and restaurants often registered in the names of associates.

In his complaint, he speculated whether one of those businesses, which operates ATMs, was the reason behind the bank’s closing his accounts.

During Monday’s hearing a lawyer representing the bank, Adam Mocciolo, said that wasn’t the case.

“ATMs are all over the place,” he said. “It’s not disputed the bank’s done business with Mr. Curcio for years, during which he’s operated these very same businesses.”

The bank sent Curcio a letter Sept. 14 saying that it had reviewed his account “and determined that we will no longer provide banking services to you.”

“Our decision was based on a number of factors including our costs for compliance, regulatory obligations and potential risks,” Laila Khouri, the bank’s vice president of customer experience manager, wrote in the letter.

Klein said the bank’s letter “begs a lot of questions.”

“Compliance with what? What regulatory obligations? What risks does the bank have for maintaining a checking account, for crying out loud?” he said.

“It does seem somewhat unusual, I’ll agree with that,” the judge said.

Mocciolo cited a 1994 Connecticut Supreme Court case that said a plaintiff filing a bill of discovery has to demonstrate probable cause to bring a potential lawsuit.

“We know that that’s not the case because Mr. Curcio says explicitly in his own papers it’s not the case,” Macciolo said.

Klein said the judge needed to grant the motion so Curcio could gather more information — that only the bank has — before filing a lawsuit.

“If we had the information, we would just file a complaint and then conduct discovery within that civil action,” he said. “By blocking the petition for a bill of discovery, the bank is seeking to force the cart before the horse. We’re not trying to do that, we need to put the horse first, the horse being the facts.”

But in his ruling, Judge Cordani said that “probable cause cannot be judged in a vacuum, it must be judged in relation to a particular cause of action and the legal elements of that specific cause of action.”