More on the Geoffrey Sullivan case (updated)

Last month I wrote about a lawsuit where a Maine woman, Sherry Sullivan, won a $21 million judgment for the wrongful death of her father. She had alleged that her father, Geoffrey Sullivan, had died in Cuban custody. Sullivan and an associate, Alexander Rorke, had a history of flying over Cuba in the early 1960’s to carry out activities, shall we say, in opposition to the Castro government.

The Cuban government didn’t respond in court, and the judge ruled in the plaintiff’s favor.

I was interested in the judge’s reasoning, especially on the issue of evidence regarding Sullivan’s whereabouts and his alleged incarceration in Cuba, so I obtained his decision (pdf) from the court.

On that score, the decision isn’t very helpful. The judge simply took the plaintiff’s proposed “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” made a few edits by hand, and made the document his judgment in the case. He removed Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and the “Army of the Republic of Cuba” as defendants and left the Cuban government as the sole defendant.

The plaintiff’s document is interesting, however. It says that Sullivan and Rorke had “participated in various anti-Castro covert operations in Central America and Cuba” including “Operation Mongoose, the covert-action sabotage and subversion program against Cuba initiated in November, 1961 and the widely-publicized April, 1963 bombing of the former Esso oil refinery in Havana, Cuba, as well as collateral activities in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.”

It goes on to cite accounts by unnamed former prisoners in Cuba who say an American named Sullivan was in Cuban prisons. It states that Sullivan has been declared legally dead in the United States, and that his death “constitutes an extrajudicial killing under applicable law.” Further, since Cuba is listed by the U.S. government as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” U.S. anti-terrorism statutes apply to the case.

A few observations:

If someone sues you in Waldo County, Maine, you had better show up and respond in court.

These days, flying over a foreign country to bomb a refinery would be considered terrorism, or it would be considered an act of war if a government were behind it. The irony of using an anti-terrorism statute to benefit Mr. Sullivan’s family doesn’t seem to have entered into this case.

It still seems to me that the U.S. government owes Ms. Sullivan a straight answer about her father’s activities and any U.S. government connection to them. Lots of information about Operation Mongoose and similar activites of that era are in the public domain.

This case is a good object lesson for anyone who thinks that normalizing relations with Cuba would be a simple act. This and similar judgments against the Cuban government are hanging out there and will need to be resolved in some fashion.

Here’s a more immediate problem. If U.S.-Cuba mail service is re-established through the talks that will begin this month, and if the two sides were to agree that flights will carry mail in both directions, how would the U.S. government ensure that Cuban planes are not subject to seizure on U.S. soil to satisfy the $21 million claim that Ms. Sullivan now holds against the Cuban government?

Update: A reader asks if Cuba could appeal this decision even though it didn’t contest the case in court. Maine attorney and blogger Alan Nye gives the following answer: “Typically, an appeal from a civil action in the Superior Court to the Maine Law Court must be filed within 21 days. However, I don’t know if filing an appeal would be the next step. Technically, on an appeal you argue that the trial court made a mistake of law in ruling on the facts presented at trial. There does not appear to have been a trial in this case so I'm not clear what an ‘appeal’ would present for issues. Since this appears to be a Default Judgment by the Court, it might be possible to file a Request for Relief From Judgment on the grounds of ‘mistake, inadverence, excusable neglect, newly discovered evidence, fraud, mistrepresentation’ etc. The motion needs to be filed in a reasonable time, but for the reasons I just listed, not more than one year after the judgment.”