SCOTUS to Hear Title III Lawsuits
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on two lawsuits related to nationalizations that took place in Cuba 65 years ago.
The lawsuits were filed under Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. claimants to sue companies that benefit from doing business on properties that were expropriated during the Cuban revolution. Title III was suspended by every U.S. president until 2019, when Trump activated the provision, opening the floodgates to dozens of suits.
Last week, the Court took up an Exxon-Mobile lawsuit against three Cuban state-run companies. The justices will consider whether the companies are liable under U.S. law or are exempt due to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), under which the case was dismissed in lower courts.
A second case to be heard by the Court features the descendants of Sosthenes Behn, a telecoms tycoon who once held a lease over three docks in Havana. Behn was also the first "representative of American finance" to meet with Adolf Hitler according to the New York Times and through investments in communications and armaments in Germany helped "build up the Nazi war machine."
Read more about the sordid history behind this case in our investigative article Billboards and Backchannels.
Behn's descendants are suing four U.S. cruise ship companies for using the Havana docks between 2015 and 2019, during Barack Obama’s historic detente — before Donald Trump prohibited cruise ships from visiting the island. In 2023, a federal judge in Miami found the cruise liners liable for over $440 million. But the 11th Circuit of Appeals overturned the decision last year based on the fact that the Behn family’s lease would have expired 11 years before the cruise ships began arriving in Havana.
A third set of Title III plaintiffs are waiting for the Court to determine whether it will hear their case.
Many of the Title III lawsuits have been dismissed in federal district courts, but some of these decisions have been appealed and the plaintiffs still could see a payday.
The plaintiffs in both cases before the Supreme Court have received the backing of the Trump administration, which has told the Court that the Title III lawsuits advance "foreign-policy objectives involving Cuba."
The cruise ship case has also received the support of prominent Florida politicians. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) urged the Court to reverse the 11th circuit ruling on the grounds that it “undermines our nation’s foreign policy on Cuba.”
Three of the four cruise ship companies being sued are headquartered in Miami.
Trump has had close ties with the cruise ship industry – in 2018 and 2019, Carnival Corporation paid over a million dollars to lobbyists with close ties to Trump, including top Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who defended Trump during his impeachment trial, and Bondi’s sister-in-law, Tandy Bondi.
But these interests have been eclipsed by Florida’s pro-sanctions bloc.
A Supreme Court decision in favor of the plaintiffs could potentially set legal precedents that strengthen other Title III cases and lead to more lawsuits.
It could also strike another blow to Cuba’s economy, which is already reeling from an unprecedented raft of sanctions imposed since the first Trump administration. The implementation of Title III in 2019 was a major blow as investors fled from the island for fear of being sued in a U.S. court.
Cuba could become even less appealing to investors if companies face the prospect not only of being dragged into court but of losing hundreds of millions of dollars.