$29.8 Million Judgment in First-Ever Helms-Burton Jury Trial
A Cuban-American plaintiff has won a major jury verdict in the Southern District of Florida against four corporate defendants associated with Expedia Group. The case involves an island off the coast of Cuba, which the plaintiff, Mario Echevarría, claimed was expropriated from his family in 1959. The defendants provided digital platforms that allowed travelers to…
Continue ReadingHelms-Burton’s Statute of Repose
Helms-Burton plaintiffs just can’t seem to catch a break. They have struggled to establish personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants, run into issues of foreign sovereign immunity, and found that their property rights have expired. Now, the Second Circuit has held that the Helms-Burton Act’s statute of repose blocks claims more than two years old. Congress…
Continue ReadingEleventh Circuit Reverses Helms-Burton Judgments
On October 22, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned judgments of more than $100 million each against four U.S.-based cruise lines under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. The decision is another example of just how difficult it has been for plaintiffs to recover under the act since President Trump allowed suits…
Continue ReadingD.C. Circuit Remands Helms-Burton Case Against Cimex
Exxon (then Standard Oil) owned several subsidiaries in Cuba that were expropriated without compensation by the Cuban government in 1960. In 1996, Congress enacted the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (CLDS), which permits suits by U.S. plaintiffs against those who traffic in property confiscated by the Cuban government. Exxon has sued Cuban state-owned companies…
Continue ReadingMore Evidence that Helms-Burton is Backfiring
In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act to strengthen sanctions against Cuba and to deter foreign companies from investing there. To discourage foreign investment, Title III created a civil remedy allowing U.S. nationals to sue any person who “traffics” in property confiscated by the Cuban government for damages in an amount three times the value…
Continue ReadingNew Article Argues that the Helms-Burton Act Has Backfired
In an article recently posted on SSRN, Gergana Sivrieva surveys cases filed under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act for trafficking in expropriated property. She shows that, surprisingly, the principal defendants have not been foreign companies investing in Cuba but rather U.S. companies with only attenuated connections to such property. Congress passed the Helm-Burton Act…
Continue ReadingThe Extraterritorial Authority of U.S. States
There is one sentence in Fuld v. PLO (2025) that has always bothered me: that “The Constitution confers upon the Federal Government—and it alone—both nationwide and extraterritorial authority.” This statement is demonstrably wrong, so much so that I was easily convinced by colleagues that it did not need direct refutation. And yet that sentence has…
Continue ReadingA Primer on Foreign Sovereign Immunity
The immunity of states from the jurisdiction of foreign domestic courts is a long-standing and mostly uncontroversial principle of customary international law. The International Court of Justice has described foreign sovereign immunity as a procedural doctrine of international law, one that “derives from the principle of sovereign equality of the States.” As a practical matter,…
Continue ReadingUsing TLB to Teach Transnational Litigation (2026 update)
One of TLB’s goals is to compile a set of educational resources for students and teachers. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been publishing updated guides on using TLB to teach different classes (all of which are available at our Teaching Resources page). This post focuses on, well, everything! It describes how teachers of…
Continue ReadingD.C. Circuit on Personal Jurisdiction in Foreign-Cubed Cases
The D.C. Circuit (Judge Patricia Millet) recently grappled with the limits of federal personal jurisdiction in a suit between foreign parties regarding events that took place outside the United States. In Gligorov v. Nation of Brunei, the court affirmed the dismissal of RICO claims against three corporate defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction. The opinion…
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