Cruise lines can be held liable for using docks seized under Castro, Supreme Court rules
WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court on Thursday generally upheld lawsuits filed by U.S. companies whose property was seized before 1960, including claims against cruise ship lines that docked in Cuba over the past decade.
These lawsuits seek compensation not from Cubans, but from those who “trade in property seized by the Cuban government.”
In an 8-1 decision, judges revived a $400 million verdict against four cruise lines whose ships stopped in Havana between 2016 and 2019.
All used docks built by the Havana Docks Corporation, an American company, in the early 20th century.
Judge Clarence Thomas noted a rarely enforced 1996 law that allows lawsuits against people “who use property that has been seized in the past.”
Past presidents had suspended enforcement of the law, but President Trump allowed such claims to be made.
This change in policy exposes “dealers in seized property of United States citizens” to litigation in federal courts, Thomas said.
Four cruise lines — Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Carnival Corporation and MSC Cruises — carry nearly a million paying passengers to Cuba, he wrote.
They paid tens of millions of dollars to the Cuban government to do business in Cuba. He said they collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from trips that included a stop in Havana.
A federal judge in Florida ordered the cruise lines to pay $100 million in damages each, but a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta blocked the ruling on a 2-1 vote. Havana Docks Corporation’s contract to operate the docks expired in 2004, he said.
Justice Elena Kagan made the same argument in dissent.
He said: “The docks belonged to the Cuban Government from the beginning – not the Havana Docks. What the Havana Docks had was just a property right that allowed it to use those docks for a certain period of time. And that limited-term interest ended in 2004, more than a decade before the cruise companies used the docks.”
A similar claim from Exxon Mobil Corp., mooted in late February, is still pending before the court.
