Yesterday, an appeals court ruled in favor of Imperial Brands, plc—a British cigarette company that was once co-owners of Habanos S.A., the Cuban cigar marketing and distribution company—and WPP, an advertising agency, in a case regarding an American law that allows citizens to sue over the trafficking of property that was confiscated by the Cuban government as part of the 1959 revolution.
As far as halfwheel knows, Luis Manuel Rodriguez, et al. v. Imperial Brands, plc, et al. is the only lawsuit of this type that deals directly with the cigar industry.
Rodriguez is a lawsuit of a relatively new genre, brought via Article III of the Helms-Burton Act, which was passed in 1996, after the Cuban military shot down two planes occupied by the Brothers to the Rescue. Article III was one part of the Helms-Burton Act, allowing Americans to sue over property they claim was seized by the Cuban government and has since been knowingly trafficked for profit by others.
However, the bill allowed the president to suspend the use of Article III, which is exactly what Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama did. In May 2019, President Trump let the suspension expire, meaning Article III was in effect, hence the relative newness of the lawsuits despite a 20-year-old law.
In May, there were major developments in two different federal lawsuits involving large corporations being sued over their business dealings in Cuba, both developments in favor of the plaintiffs in those cases.
First, American Airlines settled a lawsuit regarding its flights to Cuba and accusations that the Jose Martí Airport in Havana had been improperly seized during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Second, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against four cruise ship operators in a lawsuit over their use of docks in Havana.
In August 2020, descendants of Ramón Rodriguez Gutiérrez filed a lawsuit against Habanos S.A., Imperial Brands, plc—which, at the time, owned 50 percent of Habanos S.A.—and three advertising and public relations firms that worked with the tobacco companies.
The Rodriguez family says that Ramón owned 90 percent of Ramón Rodriguez e Hijos Sociedad en Comandita, which operated the Partagás cigarette factory, located next to the old Partagás cigar factory. When the suit was filed, they claimed that the building, now known as Empresa de Tabaco Torcido José Martí, was being used for administrative and warehouse purposes of Tabacuba, the state-run tobacco monopoly that controls half of Habanos S.A. The complaint argues that the building was used by Habanos S.A. as part of social media content—hence the ad agencies being named—and by promoting tours.
Luis Manuel Rodriguez, et al. v. Imperial Brands, plc, et al. was filed in the same federal court in Miami that heard Havana Docks—the case involving the cruise ship companies—and ended up in front of the same judge: Darrin P. Gayles.
As the parties began their defense, Gayles assigned some questions of the case to Magistrate Judge Alicia M. Otazo-Reyes. In late 2022, she recommended that the claims against Habanos S.A. be dismissed because the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act bars the Cuban company from being sued like this. Gayles accepted that ruling, which meant Habanos S.A. was, barring an appeal, off the hook.
A year later, she recommended that the case against the other defendants be dismissed for a few reasons: one related to a two-year time limit regarding when the trafficking of seized property took place, whether the defendants violated Article III’s provision to “knowingly and intentionally” traffic in seized property, and also whether the court had jurisdiction over Imperial and WPP—one of the ad agencies—as both companies are headquartered in England.
In April 2024, Gayle dismissed the case based on Otazo-Reyes’ recommendations, which led to the appeal in the Eleventh Circuit.
Judge Charlene E. Honeywell of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida heard the case alongside Judges Adalberto Jordan and Kevin Newsom of the Eleventh Circuit. Honeywell and Jordan are both Obama appointees, while Newsom is a Trump appointee.
The three judges ruled in favor of Imperial and WPP, finding that, despite some recent developments from the Supreme Court, the two British companies cannot be sued under Article III.
Newsom, the Trump appointee, wrote the decision, which is focused on something known as “personal jurisdiction,” whether a court has authority over a specific party. Previously, the lower court had determined that it did not have jurisdiction over the plaintiffs, but for different reasons.
All of this would have been much simpler if these court proceedings had taken place a year or so earlier. Had this case been decided in say, early 2025, the existing precedents would have likely made this decision easier for the judges to decide in favor of Imperial and WPP.
However, in June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, in certain instances, a federal law could allow for “personal jurisdiction” over specific foreign entities.
That case is Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Rodriguez opinion’s first page includes the line, “Doing our best to apply the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fuld…” Throughout the 32-page decision, the Eleventh Circuit’s panel grapples with Fuld and the Supreme Court’s suggestions regarding Fuld’s precedent in a case that the panel believes is meaningfully different.
A three-part test is suggested to determine whether the “reasonableness” standard is met. For Imperial and WPP, winning just one of these three parts likely meant a successful appeal:
- The burden on the defendant
- The interests of the forum State
- The plaintiffs’ interest in obtaining relief
As the court points out, the third part is the easiest to decide: the plaintiffs are suing in federal court because they are U.S. citizens and want to be compensated under Article III. A victory for the plaintiffs.
It seems likely that had the appeals panel been forced to decide the merits of this case solely on the second part, it might have also ruled in favor of Imperial and WPP. The court points out that the law in question in Fuld specifically targeted two foreign entities, whereas the way Congress wrote the Helms-Burton Act, there is a much wider range of parties and therefore the interest of the State—i.e., the federal government—is not as concrete as it was in Fuld.
However, the decision is made on the first part and the “reasonableness” standard.
The court found that neither WPP nor Imperial could have expected their actions would lead to a lawsuit like this.
“We think, U.K. law bars U.K.-incorporated companies like WPP and Imperial both from complying with Title III of the Helms-Burton Act and from defending against Title III lawsuits without authorization from the government of the United Kingdom.”
It also rejected arguments that the companies were aware that their actions could have led to a lawsuit like this, while finding that these actions didn’t have “a meaningful connection to the United States” and that the companies didn’t have a strong enough presence in the U.S. to meet the “reasonableness” standard.
“Far from the sort of by-name targeting exhibited in the PSJVTA, the Helms-Burton Act thus sweeps broadly. The fact that an entity engages in covered conduct doesn’t necessarily mean that it has a meaningful relationship with the United States. Accordingly, the Helms-Burton Act does the very thing the Fuld Court seemed to condemn: It asserts liability over ‘run-of-the-mill private defendants’ that may not have ‘meaningful ‘contacts, ties, [and] relations’ with the United States.’”
While both WPP and Imperial have American subsidiaries with U.S.-based offices, the court rejected the argument that WPP’s American subsidiaries were simply an “alter ego” of the parent company. The court gave even less consideration for Imperial’s meaningful relationship to the U.S., finding that “Habanos was controlled by Cuba, not by Imperial.”
While yesterday’s ruling is yet another loss for the plaintiffs in this case, they could appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has delivered favorable rulings to plaintiffs in other Article III cases.
In 2020, shortly after this lawsuit was filed, Imperial sold the division that included its 50 percent stake in Habanos S.A. for €1.04 billion.
Overall Score
Habanos S.A.
Imperial Brands plc
Litigation
Luis Manuel Rodriguez et al. v. Imperial Brands plc et al.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
WPP plc
