U.S. Supreme Court Lets Exxon Pursue $1 Billion Lawsuit Against Cuba

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has opened another front in the Trump administration's economic war on Cuba, allowing Exxon to pursue more than $1 billion in claims against Cuban state-owned companies weeks after it allowed the heirs of a Nazi-linked businessman to sue cruise ship companies for having docked in Havana.

The Exxon lawsuit stems from 1960, when Cuba nationalized a refinery and more than 100 gas stations amid an escalating economic confrontation with the United States. After the Eisenhower administration blocked U.S. oil exports to Cuba, the Cuban government turned to the Soviet Union for crude. When the major oil companies operating on the island refused, following pressure from Washington, to refine the Soviet crude, Cuba nationalized their refineries.

​The Court ruled that Exxon’s claims against Cuba’s state-owned companies CUPET and CIMEX are not blocked by sovereign immunity. Under that legal doctrine, foreign governments and the companies they own are generally shielded from lawsuits in U.S. courts.

The lawsuits became possible in 2019, when Donald Trump activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act after every previous president since 1996, the year the law was passed, had suspended it. (For an inside look into the lobbying campaign that led to Title III’s activation, check out our article Billboards and Backchannels). The provision allows U.S. claimants whose property was nationalized during the Cuban Revolution to sue companies for doing business on that property.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the Helms-Burton Act did not grant plaintiffs the right to sue foreign states or state-run companies in U.S. courts.

“The first clue that Helms-Burton does not abrogate sovereign immunity is the statute’s language — which says not one word on the topic,” Kagan wrote.

The ruling follows on the heels of the Court's May Havana Docks decision, which found that four major cruise ship companies could be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars to the descendants of Sosthenes Behn, a telecommunications tycoon who was the first “representative of American finance” to meet with Adolf Hitler and "helped build up the Nazi war machine.”

For more on the history of Havana Docks and the Behn family, read Billboards and Backchannels.