Man claiming ownership of Havana airport challenges dismissal of American Airlines lawsuit

ATLANTA (CN) — A Cuban-American man claiming he is the rightful heir to the Havana airport, which was seized in Cuba’s communist revolution, asked an 11th Circuit panel on Wednesday to overturn a federal judge’s dismissal of his lawsuit seeking compensation from American Airlines for what he says is trafficking of the confiscated property.

José López Regueiro argued to the panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court that a Florida federal judge misinterpreted Title III of the Helms-Burton Act in tossing out his claim that the airline is liable for unlawful trafficking by benefiting from the José Martí International Airport, which he says was confiscated from his family in 1959.

The controversial provision of the 1996 law allows Americans and Cubans who become American citizens to sue American and European companies over property confiscated during the Cuban Revolution.

The provision specifies, “In the case of property confiscated before March 12, 1996, a United States national may not bring an action under this section on a claim to the confiscated property unless such national acquires ownership of the claim before March 12, 1996.”

Attorneys on both sides Wednesday argued over the grammatical minutiae of the law, asking the panel to decide whether legislators intended that only a person who was a U.S. citizen at the time they acquired a claim to confiscated property be able to sue under Title III.

Regueiro, who became a U.S. citizen in 2015 and sued in 2021, has claimed the law only requires that a person be a U.S. citizen when filing their claim.

U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch, a Donald Trump appointee, asked the attorneys whether the term “such national” suggested Congress “intended to emphasize the requirement that the person be a U.S. national upon acquisition?”

Attorney Robert Kuntz of Rivero Mestre, who represents Regueiro, disagreed, telling the panel that the attainment of U.S. nationality “isn’t the important issue” and that his client’s claim was acquired when he inherited the airport after his father’s death in 1989, well before the date President Bill Clinton signed the law.

Kuntz said the lower court judge weighed two “non-existent” preconditions against his client in dismissing the lawsuit in 2023.

U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez ruled then Regueiro was not a U.S. national when he reportedly acquired his claim to the airport. The lower court also adopted a magistrate judge’s finding that the airport was confiscated from a Cuban national — Regueiro’s father — not a U.S. national.

Kuntz said there is no language in the act to support the existence of “imagined” preconditions requiring his client to have attained U.S. citizenship before the date the law was signed and requiring the property to have been confiscated from a U.S. national.

Regueiro’s father bought the Havana airport in 1955 though his Cuban company, Compañia de Aeropuertos Internacionales, S.A. Regueiro claims he acquired ownership of the airport through shares in the company after his father’s death.

Regueiro claims that American Airlines never sought consent from his family to sell cargo and passenger services to and from the airport.

Kuntz told the panel American Airlines knew the property was confiscated and knew it was subject to liability for “trafficking” in it but did so anyway.

Asking the panel to uphold the lower court’s decision, American Airlines argued that Regueiro cannot sue under the law because he was not a U.S. citizen when the law was signed in March 1996.

Attorney Robert Stander of Jones Day said that Congress intended to create “both a nationality and ownership requirement as of the date of [the law’s] enactment.”

Stander said Congress wrote the law that way on purpose as it was concerned foreign nationals would relocate to the United States and become citizens to take advantage of the act.

The nationality requirement, Stander said, limited the pool of potential plaintiffs to those who were U.S. citizens on the day the law passed.

“‘U.S. national’ and ‘such national’ are not meaningless placeholders, they are operative words of this statute,” Stander argued. “Congress chose to say ‘U.S. national’ instead of ‘person.’”

Stander urged the panel to find that the two terms are not interchangeable.

“That’s not a way to read a statute,” the attorney said.

Title III was suspended by every U.S. president after its passage due to opposition by U.S. allies doing business in Cuba and fears it could entangle companies in years of complicated litigation.

The Trump administration allowed the provision to go into effect in 2019 as part of an attempt to tighten the trade embargo on Cuba.

Branch was joined on the panel by fellow Trump appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant and U.S. Circuit Judge Jill Pryor, an appointee of Barack Obama.

The panel did not signal when they intend to issue a decision in the case.

Follow @KaylaGoggin_CNS