Spanish hotel chain Meliá Hotels International SA has been hit with a class-action suit—the most sweeping action so far under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which allows Americans to sue companies doing business in Cuba if they are profiting off of land expropriated after the 1959 Cuban revolution.

The suit, filed Wednesday by Coral Gables-based Rivero Mestre, lists nearly 40 plaintiffs among four families with the majority living in Miami-Dade County. White & Case partner and former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero is one of the plaintiffs.

As a class action, the suit targets all 34 of Meliá's Cuban hotels and alleges that the company is unlawfully "trafficking" in what was once their ancestors' properties, from a single hotel to an entire island. According to the statute, trafficking is defined as profiting from or engaging in commercial activity on the confiscated property.

By building or operating the hotels, the suit alleges, Meliá is trafficking in their properties and is thus subject to Helms-Burton litigation. The suit also names several United States travel booking agencies for playing a role in facilitating and profiting off reservations, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity.com, Trivago and Bookings.com.

Meliá operates more than 380 hotels across the world and is publicly traded with yearly revenue of $1.84 billion, according to MarketWatch. The hotelier's 34 Cuban hotels make it one of, if not the, largest foreign proprietor of Cuban hotels in the world.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We gave these companies the notices required in the statute to cease trafficking and they haven't stopped, so now we're going to ask the court to stop [them]," said Rivero Mestre partner Andres Rivero.

The specific claims listed in the complaint are lodged by four different Cuban American families — heirs to the founders of the hotels now operated by Meliá in conjunction with the Cuban government. Public-private partnership with the Cuban government is required for foreign investment into the country, and the suit also names the Cuban enterprises that are facilitating Meliá's operations.

Cantero, the White & Case partner, is joined by 27 other family members who are descendants of Juan Bautista Cantero and his wife Eugenia Herrera. The couple owned a seven-mile strip of land on Varadero Beach on the eastern coastline of Cuba before their land was confiscated by the Cuban government in the early 1960s.

Meliá and the Cuban government have in recent years developed nine hotels on the land, according to the complaint: Meliá Marina Varadero, Meliá Peninsula Varadero, Paradisus Princesa Del Mar Resort & Spa, Paradisus Varadero Resort & Spa, Meliá Marina Varadero Apartments, Meliá Las Americas, Meliá Varadero Hotel, Meliá Sol Palmeras, and Meliá Las Antillas.

Another set of plaintiffs  — Marisela Mata and Bibiana Hernandez — are the descendants of Antonio Mata y Alvarez, who built the Hotel San Carlos in Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1928, according to the complaint. On Dec. 4, 1962, the Cuban government expropriated the hotel from Mata y Alvarez's son, Antonio Alberto Lazaro Mata. In January of 2018, the hotel reopened under the Meliá banner.

Antonio Alonzo Mata, the 33-year-old great-grandson of Antonio Mata y Alvarez, said he grew up hearing stories of his family's great wealth: dozens of properties, hundreds of bulls, a vibrant hotel. As the story goes, it was all taken away after the revolution, and the family was repeatedly taunted and humiliated by the military. In the 1990s, his family immigrated to Florida and Alonzo Mata was raised by his uncle and cousins.

"I would love to be able to get that respect back for my family. All I've heard from my mother is how much she's suffered from this," said Alonzo Mata, a firefighter. "It's important to us because it's our family's legacy."

The third family is represented by Jose Ramon López Regueiro, the descendant of José López Vilaboy, who according to the complaint co-owned a nearly 140-room hotel in Cienfuegos, Cuba, according to the complaint. It was confiscated in February 1960, the complaint says, and is now operated as Hotel Jugua, managed by Meliá.

The final set of plaintiffs represented in the case are the eight-member Angulo Cuevas family. Their ancestors owned the island of Cayo Coco off of the North coast of Cuba before their land was expropriated Aug. 16, 1960, and the family fled to the United States, the suit alleges. In the decades since, Meliá, in a joint venture with two Cuban companies, developed what is now the Cayo Coco Resorts, a chain of several resorts.

Because of so-called blocking statutes — laws passed in several countries, including Spain, that block Helms-Burton actions, the plaintiffs will most likely only be able to collect by targeting Meliá's assets in the U.S.

The hotel chain has a property in Orlando and New York, but it's unclear how much or what collection mechanism the plaintiffs have at their disposal if a court rules against Meliá.

Damages for Helms-Burton litigation are calculated by a formula: the greater of either fair market value of the property at the time of confiscation, plus interest, the current market value of the property or the "amount determined" as the value of the claim if it is certified by the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC).

Defendants are further subject to treble damages, essentially triple the original amount, if they were put on specific notice of trafficking and did not cease within thirty days, or if the property is certified by the FCSC. Because of this, previous suits have claimed damages in the hundreds of millions, as is the case with a suit filed in July against French investment bank Société Générale S.A.

According to the complaint, none of the plaintiffs was able to file a claim with the FCSC, as they were not U.S. citizens at the time of the confiscation. And the complaint does not estimate potential damages, although Rivero said the firm did give proper notice and thus the defendants should be subject to treble damages.

In August, U.S. District Senior Judge James Lawrence King and U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom declined to toss two Helms-Burton lawsuits brought against Carnival Corp. in the Southern District of Florida — a small victory for supporters in a legal arena with little-to-no precedent.

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