Havana Docks Corporation v. Royal Caribbean Cruises

Under Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, a company that once held any property interest in physical property that Cuba confiscated can sue anyone who later "traffics" in — that is, knowingly uses or commercially benefits from — that physical property, even if the company's original interest in it would have expired before the trafficking occurred. Justice Clarence Thomas authored the 8-1 majority opinion of the Court. Title III imposes liability on any person who traffics in "property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government" after January 1, 1959, without the authorization of the U.S. national who owns the claim to that property. The Act defines "property" broadly to include both physical things and legal interests in them — such as real estate, personal property, leases, and other rights. This definition makes clear that liability attaches for trafficking in either. When the Cuban government physically seized the docks in 1960 — expelling Havana Docks' employees and assuming direct control — it "confiscated" that physical property within the Act's plain meaning, which covers any seizure of "ownership or control of property." At that moment, the docks became tainted: off-limits to anyone who might later use them without the original claimholder's permission. A plaintiff bringing a Title III claim need only show that (1) Cuba confiscated property after January 1, 1959; (2) the defendant knowingly trafficked in that property; and (3) the plaintiff is a U.S. national who owns a certified claim to it. The Eleventh Circuit's competing approach — which required courts to imagine a world without confiscation and then ask whether the defendant's conduct would have interfered with the plaintiff's interest in that hypothetical scenario — finds no support in the Act's text. That counterfactual framework would actually gut Title III's core applications. For instance, if a court must pretend confiscation never happened, then in that imagined world the original American owner still holds the property interest — meaning a third party could never have bought or sold it, which would eliminate liability for the most straightforward trafficking the Act targets. Title III is simply an anti-trafficking law: it acknowledges that Cuba's expropriation destroyed the plaintiff's property interest, then gives that plaintiff a right to compensation from anyone who later profits from the same tainted property. Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, agreeing with the holding but writing separately to flag two unresolved issues for remand: whether the Act's damages structure permits potentially unlimited stacked recoveries far exceeding the original certified loss (which may raise due process concerns), and whether the cruise lines' voyages qualified for the statutory exception that shields property uses "incident to lawful travel to Cuba." Justice Elena Kagan dissented, arguing that the docks were never Havana Docks' property to begin with — Cuba always owned them — so Cuba could not have "confiscated" what it already possessed; what Cuba confiscated was only Havana Docks' time-limited operating concession, which would have expired in 2004, and the cruise lines' use of the docks more than a decade after that expiration date cannot constitute trafficking in property that no longer existed.