The travel booking giant Expedia Group won a resounding victory in federal civil court in Miami on Monday against two Cuban Americans who had claimed the company and its affiliates exploited hotels and land they owned and that were confiscated by the Cuban government.
The plaintiffs sought to use a 1996 American law, the Helms-Burton Act, which allows naturalized American citizens to sue companies that “traffic” in property confiscated from their families in Cuba.
The plaintiffs argued that Expedia had engaged in unlawful trafficking by facilitating bookings at five hotels on land seized by the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution. The jury in Miami found, however, that the plaintiffs lacked concrete proof of ownership or official confiscation records for the properties.
Expedia did not immediately comment on the verdict. But the company had maintained that its business was conducted under authorized travel licenses issued during the second Obama administration. The jury did not address this question, since the finding of a lack of proof of ownership made all other legal issues redundant.
It was the second legal victory for Expedia over a claim linked to Cuba. Last year, the company won a victory in a lawsuit that sought more than $1.7 billion in damages related to hotel bookings on land previously owned by the Sanchez Hill family.
The latest trial revolved around a clash between the moral indignation of the Cuban American families seeking restitution for lost heritage and Expedia’s explanation that its actions were legally compliant commerce during a period of shifting U.S.-Cuban policy.
“These defendants used these properties in league with the Cuban communist partners,” said Andres Rivero, the lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Expedia ceased all bookings in April last year in Cuba after President Trump reversed the Obama administration opening.
However distasteful the plaintiffs in the latest case found President Barack Obama’s policy of encouraging travel to the communist-run island, “this case is not about what the right policy in Cuba is,” said David Shank, a lawyer representing Expedia.
Expedia’s lawyers argued it “did not knowingly and intentionally traffic” in the property, as the company had been unaware, he said, that the hotels were on confiscated land. It ceased doing business with the hotels as soon as it learned of the claims by the Echevarria and Mata families, the lawyers said.
John Kavulich, an expert at the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said after the verdict that anyone considering a lawsuit under the Helms-Burton Act “should not be singularly discouraged by today’s verdict.” Dozens more Cuban claims are already in motion, he noted, including two that are headed to the Supreme Court.
While some experts consider the definition of trafficking under the Helms-Burton Act to be overly broad, the verdict showed the difficulty of proving such historical cases.
“Expedia’s victory highlights the significant obstacles Cuban Americans continue to face when pursuing claims involving assets expropriated decades ago,” said Paolo Spadoni, a political economist at Augusta University in Georgia who studies Cuba’s tourism industry.
The principal challenge for Cuban Americans is not proving that companies like Expedia and others derived economic benefits from expropriated properties, said Mr. Spadoni. Instead, he said, “the more fundamental challenge is establishing that they possess legally cognizable property rights in the assets at issue.”
In an effort to prove inherited ownership dating back decades, the plaintiffs in the latest Expedia case put family members on the stand, pulling at the heartstrings of the jury.
Lawyers for one plaintiff, Maricela Mata, 66, who sought $1.5 million, produced faded documents that purported to show her inherited ownership dating to her grandfather Antonio Mata, who built the San Carlos hotel in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1928.
Mr. Shank, the lawyer for Expedia, argued that those documents were not a deed to property but rather a commercial business registry that did not show “who owned the dirt.”
The other plaintiff, Mario Echevarria, 91, who was seeking $10 million, claimed that his family had owned Cayo Coco, a large island off Cuba’s north coast that was developed as an all-inclusive tourist resort in the 1990s.
Expedia’s lawyers argued that it was unclear who are the real heirs of the 143-square-mile island, which is slightly larger than the entire Florida Keys.
“Who owns it? I have no idea,” Mr. Shank told the jury. “It’s up to you,” he said.
In 2025, a Miami federal jury awarded to Mr. Echevarria almost $30 million in damages related to three other hotels on Cayo Coco, where Expedia and its affiliate sites operated.
A judge set aside that verdict, saying that Expedia could not be held liable for its subsidiaries. The case is under appeal.
