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The United States Supreme Court has allowed a long-running maritime dispute involving cruise shipping companies and Cuban port infrastructure to proceed, reinstating litigation brought by Havana Docks Corporation against Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, and MSC.
The case concerns cruise port calls made between 2016 and 2019, when the companies used passenger terminals in Havana following a temporary easing of the USA's travel restrictions under the Obama administration. Those facilities were originally developed and operated under a long-term concession held by Havana Docks before being nationalised by the Cuban government in the aftermath of the 1959 revolution.
Havana Docks initiated proceedings under the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which permits U.S. nationals to seek damages from entities alleged to have trafficked in property confiscated by Cuba.
Lower courts initially awarded damages exceeding US$400 million, concluding that the cruise companies used port assets linked to the confiscated concession. That outcome was later overturned on appeal, with the appellate court reasoning that the original concession would have expired in 2004 and therefore could not have been infringed by operations undertaken more than a decade later.
On review, the Supreme Court reversed that interpretation in an 8–1 decision, holding that liability under the statute turns on use of confiscated property itself rather than the hypothetical continuation of the claimant's time-limited concession. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas stated that the legal framework focuses on the use of property that was confiscated by the Cuban government and that Havana Docks was not required to demonstrate interference with an unexpired counterfactual property interest.
The court's ruling returned the case for further proceedings consistent with that interpretation. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, arguing that the concessionary interest had expired well before the cruise operations in question and that this temporal disconnect should preclude liability under the statute.
The litigation forms part of a wider body of disputes enabled by the activation of Title III enforcement provisions of the Helms-Burton Act, which had been suspended for years by successive U.S. administrations before being allowed to proceed in 2019. The decision is expected to influence parallel claims involving other Cuban assets and international operators that engaged with Cuban ports during the period of renewed cruise activity.
Fuente: Cruise Mapper
