Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba)
The Court holds that the Helms-Burton Act itself strips Cuban government agencies and instrumentalities of foreign sovereign immunity, so a U.S. national suing them under the Act for trafficking in confiscated property does not also have to fit the suit within an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Case background
In 1960, after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, the Cuban Government confiscated many foreign-owned assets, including Exxon’s oil refinery, terminals, packaging plants, and more than a hundred service stations. Since then, two Cuban government-owned companies, Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET) and Corporación CIMEX, S. A. (Cuba) (CIMEX), have operated and profited from Exxon’s expropriated assets. In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which created a private right of action for U.S. nationals whose property was confiscated by the Cuban Government against “any person” that “traffics in” the confiscated property, with “person” defined to include “any agency or instrumentality of a foreign state.” Exxon sued CUPET, CIMEX, and later CIMEX’s Panamanian alter ego under the Act in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. The companies moved to dismiss, asserting immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA); Exxon countered that the Helms-Burton Act itself waived their immunity. The District Court sided with the Cuban government defendants, and a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed.
Questions Presented
(1) Whether the Helms-Burton Act abrogates foreign sovereign immunity in cases against Cuban instrumentalities, or whether parties proceeding under that Act must also satisfy an exception under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Holding
The Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities; plaintiffs who sue them under the Act need not also satisfy one of the FSIA’s enumerated exceptions. Four features, taken together, make the waiver clearly discernible: the Act’s cause of action expressly runs against agencies and instrumentalities of a foreign state; applying the FSIA would largely negate that cause of action, since the Act’s own embargo makes the commercial-activity and expropriation exceptions nearly impossible to meet; the Act places these suits under federal-question jurisdiction (28 U.S.C. § 1331) rather than the FSIA’s § 1330; and the Act gives the President gatekeeping power to suspend suits, echoing the pre-FSIA regime of executive immunity decisions. Congress need not use magic words to abrogate sovereign immunity.
The Court
Justice Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett. Justice Kagan filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson.
What this episode contains
This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba), written by Justice Kavanaugh.
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 Kavanaugh. The text being read is the Court’s published majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.