Federal Judge Overturns the Only Jury Win Under the Helms-Burton Act's Title III

A federal judge has thrown out the first and only jury verdict ever won under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, wiping away a $29.8 million damages award against Expedia and three related corporate defendants that a Miami jury had handed down in April 2025. The ruling leaves Title III litigation — a body of lawsuits that had been slowly building since 2019 — without a single surviving plaintiff verdict at trial.

The Southern District of Florida jury delivered its verdict on April 18, 2025, awarding $29.8 million in damages against Expedia and the related defendants under Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996. Title III allows U.S. nationals whose property was confiscated by the Cuban government to sue people or companies that "traffic" in that confiscated property — meaning they knowingly use or profit from it commercially. The provision had been suspended by every presidential administration since the law's enactment in 1996. That suspension ended in May 2019, when the Trump administration allowed Title III to take effect, setting off a wave of lawsuits against travel companies, hotel operators, and other firms with commercial ties to Cuba (Eckert Seamans; Steptoe).

The reversal came after Expedia, Orbitz, and Hotels.com moved to overturn the verdict on August 26, 2025, arguing that a recent ruling from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals undermined the plaintiff's claims. The federal judge agreed and overturned the jury's award, which post-verdict filings had reported at $29.85 million (Law360; Miami Herald).

The Expedia verdict was not the only Helms-Burton case to go against plaintiffs in 2025. On July 31, 2025, a jury in Delaware federal court returned a defense verdict in favor of Expedia Group, Inc., in a separate Helms-Burton Act lawsuit involving a billion-dollar claim (Scott Douglass). That Delaware verdict and the Florida reversal together eliminated the two most prominent plaintiff milestones in Title III litigation to date.

Further narrowing the plaintiff side, a Florida federal judge dismissed claims from three plaintiffs who were attempting to join a proposed class-action lawsuit against Expedia over Helms-Burton violations. That ruling, reported in November 2025, trimmed the class action's plaintiff roster even as the individual verdict against Expedia was being vacated (Law360). The class action and individual suits followed different procedural paths but converged on the same defendant and the same legal framework.

The defense record under Title III extends beyond Expedia. The law firm Jones Day secured dismissal of a Helms-Burton Act lawsuit alleging unlawful trafficking in a confiscated airport in Havana, in case No. 19-23965-CIV in the Southern District of Florida. That dismissal, for failure to state a claim, addressed allegations that the defendant had used José Martí International Airport property expropriated by the Cuban government (Jones Day).

The broader context here is that Title III litigation has produced a consistent pattern of defense outcomes at both the early dismissal stage and at trial. The statute's definition of "trafficking" requires knowing and intentional commercial use of confiscated property. Defendants have successfully argued that online booking platforms and travel intermediaries — which do not directly occupy or operate the underlying properties — do not meet that standard. The Florida jury verdict in April 2025 stood as the sole exception to that pattern, and its reversal eliminates even that data point.

What remains is a body of litigation in which plaintiffs have secured neither a sustained jury verdict nor a certified class against the travel and hospitality defendants that make up the primary enforcement targets under Title III. The class action against Expedia continues with a reduced plaintiff set. The Eleventh Circuit's reasoning, which Expedia invoked to overturn the Florida verdict, will likely shape how lower courts evaluate the "trafficking" element in pending and future Title III suits. For corporate defendants, the Delaware defense verdict and the Florida reversal together reinforce the strategic approach that has dominated this litigation: aggressive motion practice, spreading cases across multiple jurisdictions, and reliance on the knowing-use standard as a threshold defense.

The November 2025 dismissal of additional plaintiffs from the proposed class action signals that the procedural posture for Title III class claims remains unsettled. Whether any plaintiff will secure a sustained verdict under Title III is now an open question that the appellate courts, rather than juries, will likely answer first.