This consolidated appeal involves successors-in-interest to Banco Pujol and Banco Nuñez, two Cuban banks seized by the Castro regime in 1960. In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, creating a private cause of action for U.S. nationals against persons who traffic in confiscated Cuban property. However, the private right of action remained dormant for 23 years because every President suspended it until May 2019. When the plaintiffs finally sued French banks Société Générale and BNP Paribas in 2019 and 2020, the banks moved to dismiss. The district courts dismissed the cases, ruling that most allegations were time-barred because the statute of repose had expired and that the remaining allegations failed to state a plausible claim of trafficking.
The Court addressed four primary issues. First, it affirmed that the plaintiffs have Article III standing because the alleged unjust enrichment constitutes a concrete, particularized injury. Second, the Court held that 22 U.S.C. § 6084 is a statute of repose, not a statute of limitations. The text states that an action may not be brought more than two years after the trafficking 'has ceased to occur,' which runs from the defendant's last culpable act rather than the plaintiff's discovery of the injury. As a statute of repose, it extinguishes the cause of action after a fixed period and is not subject to equitable tolling. Third, the Court rejected the argument that Presidential suspensions of the right to sue tolled the statute of repose. The Court reasoned that suspending the right to bring an action does not extend the defendant's right to be free from liability after a fixed period. Such an interpretation would undermine the Act's purpose of incentivizing traffickers to stop their activities. Finally, the Court found that the plaintiffs' timely allegations failed to plausibly state a claim. The complaints relied on 'information and belief' without specific facts to link the banks' post-2010 conduct to the trafficking of the specific confiscated property, and the allegation regarding cash deliveries did not plausibly allege that the cash itself was confiscated property.
The decision permanently bars securities-related claims against the banks for any trafficking conduct that ceased more than two years before the plaintiffs filed their complaints. It clarifies that the Helms-Burton Act's time bar is absolute and not extended by the long period of Presidential suspensions. Future plaintiffs must ensure their claims are filed within two years of the defendant's last trafficking act, or they will be time-barred regardless of when the right to sue was suspended.
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