Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.
The Court holds that under Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, a plaintiff need not show the defendant trafficked in the plaintiff's particular property interest; using the underlying confiscated physical property is enough. Four cruise lines that embarked passengers from docks in the Port of Havana between 2016 and 2019 used 'property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government,' even though Havana Docks Corporation's time-limited concession in those docks would have expired in 2004.
Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-983_c07d.pdf
Case background
In 1928, the United States-based Havana Docks Corporation acquired from the Cuban Government a time-limited property interest, a usufructuary concession, in the development and operation of docks at the Port of Havana, set to expire in 2004. After Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, the new Cuban Government decreed that it would forcibly take American-owned properties in Cuba and specifically identified Havana Docks; in 1960 it seized the docks without compensation. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission later certified about $9 million in losses, plus six percent annual interest, but Havana Docks had no means to obtain compensation. In 1996, Congress enacted the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, 22 U.S.C. § 6021 et seq., which creates a private right of action for U.S. nationals who own claims to property confiscated by the Cuban Government on or after January 1, 1959. Title III of the Act imposes liability on those who knowingly and intentionally traffic in such confiscated property. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama continuously suspended the Title III right of action; President Trump allowed the suspension to expire in May 2019. From 2016 to 2019, four commercial cruise lines — Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Carnival, and MSC — transported nearly a million paid passengers to Cuba, using the docks Havana Docks had built to embark and disembark them. Havana Docks sued the cruise lines under Title III in the Southern District of Florida. The District Court rejected the cruise lines’ argument that they were not liable because Havana Docks’s interest would have expired in 2004 absent confiscation, and entered summary judgment, awarding Havana Docks more than $100 million from each. A divided panel of the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding that a defendant is liable for trafficking only if its conduct would have interfered with the plaintiff’s property interest had there been no confiscation.
Questions Presented
- Whether a plaintiff suing under Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act must prove that the defendant trafficked in property confiscated by the Cuban Government as to which the plaintiff owns a claim, or instead that the defendant trafficked in property that the plaintiff would have continued to own at the time of trafficking in a counterfactual world “as if there had been no expropriation.”
Holding
The cruise lines’ use of the docks is sufficient to establish that they used “property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government”; Havana Docks is not required to establish that the cruise lines trafficked in Havana Docks’s own property interest. Under the plain text of Title III, “property which was confiscated” can refer to the physical property in which the plaintiff had an interest, and not just the interest itself. Confiscated property is, as it were, tainted — off limits — such that anyone who uses it can be liable to those who had any interest in that property. The Eleventh Circuit’s counterfactual approach conflicts with the statutory text, and the cruise lines’ argument that the Cuban Government confiscated only the concession and not the docks themselves fails: when armed agents physically occupied the dock facilities in 1960, they seized control of the docks within the meaning of the Act.
The Court
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson joined. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Kavanaugh joined. Justice Kagan filed a dissenting opinion.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., written by Justice Thomas.
AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone, inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be attributed to Justice Thomas. The text being read is the Court’s published majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.