A U.S. judge ruled on December 30, that Norwegian Cruise Line must pay $110 million in damages for use of a port that Cuba’s government confiscated in 1960.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami follows her March ruling that the use of the Havana Cruise Port Terminal constituted trafficking in confiscated property owned by the plaintiff, Delaware-registered Havana Docks Corp.
Plaintiff is awarded $109,848,747.87 in damages
reads the decision, adding that Norwegian should also pay an additional $3 million in legal fees and costs.
U.S. cruise ships in 2016 started traveling to Cuba for the first time in decades following a detente negotiated by former President Barack Obama that eased some provisions of a U.S. embargo in place since the Cold War.
But the Trump administration in 2019 ordered a halt to all such cruises amid efforts to pressure Cuba over its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an ideological adversary of Washington.
The Trump administration also allowed U.S. citizens to sue third parties for using property seized by Cuban authorities, a provision of the Helms-Burton Act that had been waived by every previous president since the law’s 1996 passage.
Havana Docks says Cuba, which has been subject to a decades-old U.S. trade embargo, never compensated it for the takeover of the property.
As a result, it sued the four cruise lines in 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Judge Bloom in March held that the companies were liable for damages under the Helms-Burton Act, also known as the Libertad Act.
