First up this week are Jacob Buchdahl and his team at Susman Godfrey. After an 11-day bench trial in August, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Andrew Borrok last week awarded their client BML Properties $1.6 billion in connection with a dispute with China Construction America Inc. over delays at the Baha Mar resort casino in the Bahamas. Borrok found that despite CCA's contractual obligations, the company diverted "resources and manpower to competing projects, concealing those diversions, and even engaging in outright sabotage of the project." The project declared bankruptcy in June 2015, just three months after its failed opening. Borrok awarded BML $845 million in fraud damages—the amount of its entire investment in the development—as well as prejudgment interest going back to May 2014. The trial team included Susman partners Elisha Barron and Tamar Lusztig and associate Stephanie Spies, with co-counsel Mark Zauderer and Jason Cohen of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer.

Appellate teams led by Paul Clement of Clement & Murphy and Kannon Shanmugam of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison helped four major cruise lines secure the reversal of a first-of-its kind $440 million judgment handed down under the Helms-Burton Act, a federal law concerning the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The plaintiff, Havana Docks Corp., claimed it had an ownership interest in what's now known as the Havana Cruise Port Terminal prior to the Cuban Revolution. But a divided Eleventh Circuit panel found this week that Havana Docks actually held a 99-year concession that would have expired in 2004, well before the cruise lines sailed to Havana between 2016 and 2019. Shanmugam represented Carnival Corp. alongside Paul Weiss associates Abigail Frisch Vice and William Marks and co-counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner, Akerman and Jones Walker. Clement represented Royal Caribbean Group alongside partner Matthew Rowen. E. Joshua Rosenkranz of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe led the team for MSC Cruises with partner Robert Loeb alongside co-counsel from Venable. Derek Shaffer of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan represented Norwegian Cruise Line alongside partner Christopher Michel.