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Technology and logistics giant Amazon was hit with a Helms-Burton lawsuit on Thursday, just one day after American Airlines was also targeted under the law, which allows Americans to sue companies for trafficking in property appropriated by the Cuban government following the 1959 revolution.

Amazon is now the third U.S. company to be sued under the law. The Helms-Burton Act was first passed in 1996 but every U.S. administration had suspended it until the Trump administration announced it would, for the first time, allow it to take effect.

Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida on Thursday by Miami-based Cueto Law Group.

The property at the centre of the lawsuit is a 2,000-acre plot of land in what was then the Oriente province in eastern Cuba. The land is allegedly being used by Miami-based company FOGO Charcoal, which is also listed as a defendant, to produce "artisanal" charcoal, which is then distributed by Amazon and sold on its website, thereby trafficking in the property, according to the complaint.

Plaintiff Daniel Gonzalez is the grandson of the original owner, Manuel Gonzalez Rodriguez, who bought the property in 1941. Shortly after Fidel Castro's government came to power and passed the Agrarian Reform Act, which nationalised private farms, the government seized the family property, giving them seven days' notice to vacate, according to the complaint.

As of Thursday morning, the product was no longer on Amazon's site.

On January 5, 2017, Marabu charcoal became the first legal Cuban export to the U.S. after then-President Barack Obama passed measures easing the embargo. According to a report in the Miami Herald, Cuba exports between 40,000 and 80,000 pounds of Marabu charcoal to half a dozen countries, including Italy and Germany.

Gonzalez said through a statement released by his law firm that it is ironic that Amazon is complicit in the trafficking of his grandfather's property, as Miguel Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' father, who was himself a Cuban exile, seeded several hundred thousand dollars to a then-nascent Amazon in 1995.

"It's ironic, in my opinion, that the initial seed capital for Amazon came from the generosity of a Cuban exile – the founder's father. Now 25 years later, the company is profiting from property seized by the same communist regime from which [the founder's father] fled," Gonzalez said.

While the complaint lists no specific damages, the Helms-Burton law specifies that damages from litigation under the Act be calculated using 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".

Because of this calculation, previous Helms-Burton suits have claimed damages of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the case for one suit filed in July against French investment bank Société Générale S.A.