Miami man wins $30M verdict against Expedia over confiscated property in Cuba
In a first such decision,, a Miami federal jury has found that travel booking company Expedia Group ows $29.85 million to a Cuban-American family in damages for having promoted and sold bookings to Floridians at hotels in land confiscated by the Cuban government during the early days of Fidel Castro's revolution.
The case was filed by Mario Echevarría, one of the heirs of a Cuban family that claimed ownership of Cayo Coco, a small key off the northern coast of central Cuba, against Expedia and its affiliate sites Hotels.com and Orbitz under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. It is the first of such lawsuits to reach a jury trial.
The Helms-Burton Act gives U.S. nationals who hold a claim to property that the Cuban government confiscated without compensation the right to sue companies, American or foreign, who have profited or 'trafficked' in such property. Fromn 1996 to 2019, successive U.S. presidents had suspended the Helms-Burton provision, Title III, that provides that legal path, In 2019, President Donald Trump enacted that portion of the act during his first term.
The long pause and several other legal technicalities have complicated the attempts of dozens of U.S. companies and property heirs from prevailing in court. Several other prominent Helms-Burton lawsuits have been turned down on appeal or are headed to the Supreme Court after years of expensive litigation.
But a jury in Florida's Southern District found last Friday that Expedia and its affiliates didn't follow the law by promoting tourism to Cuba and by marketing and selling bookings for Cayo Coco's all-inclusive hotels built in land confiscated from Echevarría's family in 1960.
'This is a major victory not only for our client, but also for the broader community of Cuban-Americans whose property was wrongfully taken and has been exploited by U.S. companies in partnership with the Cuban communist dictatorship,' attorney Andrés Rivero said. 'We are proud to have played a role in securing justice under a law that had never before been tested before a jury.'
The verdict comes six years after Echevarría first notified Expedia that the family was planning to sue in August 2019.
After a two-week trial, the jury found that Echevarría had a 12,5% ownership interest in Cayo Coco and awarded $9,950,000 in damages. The jury also decided to triple the amount the companies must pay because Expedia and its affiliates continued promoting hotels in Cayo Coco after being notified of the potential lawsuit. It is yet unclear if each company would have to pay $30 million separately, and the judge presiding over the case, Federico A. Moreno, has ordered further proceedings.
The travel booking companies have until July to challenge the verdict, Moreno wrote.
Santosh Aravind, a lawyer representing the travel booking companies, told the jury the firms had committed a 'mistake,' not an intentional act of 'trafficking,' and questioned Echevarría's inheritance claims on Cayo Coco's property, Law360 reported. But the jury was unpersuaded.
'We are disappointed in the jury's verdict, which we do not believe was supported by the law or evidence.,' David Shank, a lawyer representing the companies, told the Miami Herald. 'We believe the court was correct to decline immediate entry of judgment and look forward to the court's consideration of the legal sufficiency of the evidence presented to the jury.'
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