It
appears likely from the State Department’s announcement
that Title III of the Helms-Burton law will be allowed to go into effect around
March 1. No U.S. President has permitted this: Since enactment in 1996,
Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump have blocked it every six months.
As
a result, those whose properties in Cuba were expropriated and who can identify
a foreign business connected to that property, can sue the foreign business in
U.S. courts – even if the plaintiff was not a U.S. citizen or resident at the
time of the taking.
My
opinion on all this is here.
Some more info on Title III:
The
law is presented as protection for claimants who were never compensated. But the
right to sue is limited. Cuban Americans can’t sue for their homes. No one can
sue for a property worth $50,000 or less when it was taken. And the right to
sue expires if Cuba’s socialist government goes away, or if the President
decides to suspend it again.
The
law also shields two classes of business from Title III lawsuits.
First
are those engaged in “the delivery of international
telecommunication signals to Cuba.” In other words, companies delivering voice
or data traffic to the Cuban network are protected, while those whose
businesses extend into the Cuban domestic network are not.
Then there are those engaged in “transactions and uses of property incident to lawful travel to Cuba, to
the extent that such transactions and uses of property are necessary to the
conduct of such travel.” The House-Senate report accompanying the bill put it
more simply: “any activities related to lawful travel to Cuba” are protected. Those
who want to sue, for example, based on ownership of a port facility, are surely
searching for ways to argue that this language should not apply.
In
theory, the damages could be substantial; the law fixes them at three times the
property’s current value, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees.
Finally,
some U.S. businesses who lost property in Cuba were partially compensated
through a tax deduction. In November 1962, the IRS allowed them to deduct Cuba
confiscation losses from their business income.
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