Supreme Court rules for Havana Docks against cruise ships for $440M
by Lisa Hornung · UPIMay 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday ruled against four major cruise lines who docked ships at the Port of Havana.
Carnival, MSC, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian operated cruises to Havana from 2016 to 2019 and used the docks to land there illegally, according to the complaint. The decision reinstates a $440 million judgment against them, but it allows them to use new arguments in lower courts.
The Court decision was 8-1, with only Justice Elena Kagan dissenting. The decision doesn't decide the case but allows the litigation to continue.
The companies are alleged to have violated the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which allows Americans to seek damages against anyone who "traffics in" property seized by Fidel Castro's regime in the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The law also allows former Cubans who later gained U.S. citizenship to sue.
Havana Docks, the company that built the docks in 1905, had a 99-year legal right to operate the Port of Havana before it was confiscated soon after Castro took over. The company sued the cruise lines over the trips and won the $440 million. But an appeals court wiped the award because it was past the 99-year term.
"We disagree," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. "The Act generally makes those who use property tainted by a past confiscation liable to any United States national who owns a claim to that property."
"Havana Docks has shown that the cruise lines used confiscated property in which Havana Docks had a property interest and to which it owns a claim," Thomas added.
Kagan wrote in her dissent that the expiration of the agreement matters.
"What Havana Docks owned was only a property interest allowing it to use those docks for a specified time. And that time-limited interest expired in 2004 -- more than a decade before the cruise lines ever used the docks," Kagan wrote.
Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, written by then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and then-Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., after Cuba shot down two unarmed civilian planes in 1996, flown by Cuban exiles from Miami.
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department formally charged former Cuban President Raúl Castro for allowing the shooting of the aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-American exile organization. The indictment also included other Cuban military officials: Emilio José Palacio Blanco, José Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raúl Simanca Cárdenas, Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez and Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez.
Cruise ships were allowed to take Americans to Cuba from 2016 to 2019 after then-President Barack Obama relaxed travel restrictions for U.S. citizens. The restrictions were tightened again in 2019. In 2021, the State Department redesignated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism during President Donald Trump's first term in office.