CUBA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Martin Domb, Pedro A. Freyre, Augusto E. Maxwell, Christopher Carver and Lorayne Perez, Akerman LLP
tiary objections directed at both (i) the testimony of the plaintiff’s family members, who purported to have information regarding the Echevarria family’s owner- ship of Cayo Coco from a time when those witnesses were young children, and (ii) the admission in evidence of ancient documents purporting to evidence the long line of property transfers culminating in the plaintiff. At the conclusion of the two-week trial, a Miami-Dade County jury returned a verdict in favour of Echevar- ria and against each of the four Expedia defendants in the amount of USD29.8 million, inclusive of treble damages. After the trial, and during a post-trial motion briefing, the Eleventh Circuit decided, in an unpub- lished decision, the case of Del Valle v Trivago GMBH, No 23-12966, 2025 WL 1443951 (11th Cir. 20 May 2025), holding that the Act’s requirement that traffick- ing be “knowing and intentional” meant that a defend- ant must have information giving rise to a “substantial or high likelihood” that the plaintiff was the owner of a claim to confiscated property. After a hearing, the court granted the Expedia defend- ants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law, nullifying the jury’s verdict. First, the Court found that defendant Expedia Group, Inc., a holding company, could not be held liable for the acts of its codefendants, Hotels. com GP, LLC, Hotels.com L.P. and Orbitz, LLC, or for the acts of non-party Expedia, Inc., which were sepa- rate corporations. The plaintiff’s evidence that Expe- dia Group communicated with hotels in Cuba, leased office space in Miami, Florida for a group of employ- ees dedicated to overseeing business in Cuba, devel- oped drop-down menus for guests to indicate which authorised exception applies to their Cuba travel, and applied to the United States Office of Foreign Asset Control for a license to conduct business in Cuba was insufficient to establish that Expedia Group trafficked in the plaintiff’s property.
The judge also found, with respect to defendants Hotels.com GP, LLC, Hotels.com L.P. and Orbitz, LLC that the evidence at trial failed to show that those defendants continued to offer booking services at the subject hotels after they received notice from Eche- varria in August 2019 that he claimed a right to Cayo Coco, Cuba. To make this determination, the court analysed each defendant’s bookings with respect to each hotel at issue, using the date of bookings as the date of trafficking (rather than the guests’ check- in or check-out date, which the plaintiff argued for). Because the last date of booking at the hotels pre- dated the defendants’ receipt of the plaintiff’s notice, defendants did not knowingly and intentionally traffic in the property. It was insufficient, according to the judge, that prior to receiving the plaintiff’s cease-and- desist notice, defendants were presumed to know about President Clinton’s signing statement when the Helms-Burton Act was enacted, that defendants’ employees believed that all private real property in Cuba had been confiscated by the Cuban government, or that the employees believed the hotels in question were built on confiscated land. These points, even if true, would not have given defendants the requisite knowledge that the plaintiff’s property, in particular, was confiscated, being trafficked, and belonged to a US national holding a claim to it. Echevarria has filed notices of appeal from this deci- sion to the Eleventh Circuit.
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