On September 5, 2025, a federal trial court in Miami granted judgment as a matter of law for SDM’s client, Expedia Group, and three of its subsidiaries, reversing verdicts totaling $119 million.

The plaintiff, Mario Echevarria, sued Expedia Group, two Hotels.com entities, and Orbitz in June 2019, alleging that they trafficked in confiscated Cuban property by facilitating bookings at hotels located on Cayo Coco, an island off the coast of Cuba. Echevarria asserted that his family owned the island before it was confiscated by the Cuban government. After a two-week trial in Miami in April 2025, the jury returned a verdict for Echevarria, awarding more than $29 million in damages. Echevarria’s counsel demanded that the trial court immediately enter four separate judgments—one for each of the four defendants—for a total award of $119 million. But the trial court declined to enter any judgment at that time and instead ordered the parties to submit briefing on many of the arguments SDM raised throughout the case challenging the legal sufficiency of the evidence.

On September 5, 2025, the Court granted SDM’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, finding that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the verdict. The court found “no evidence that Expedia Group facilitated any bookings whatsoever at any of the three hotels in question,” and held that Expedia Group, as the parent non-operating holding company, cannot be held liable for the acts of its operating subsidiaries. As for the operating subsidiaries, the court concluded there was no evidence that they ever acted “knowingly and intentionally,” as the Helms-Burton Act requires, because they ceased offering bookings at the hotels before even receiving notice of Echevarria’s purported claim to the property. The court therefore set aside the jury verdict and entered judgment in favor of SDM’s clients.

David Shank is lead counsel for Expedia Group in this and other Helms-Burton Act cases. David, Santosh Aravind, and Cheryl LaFond led SDM’s trial team in this case, which also included Stephen Burbank, Becca Jahnke, and Mary Byars. Jane Webre led the post-trial briefing efforts and, together with David Shank, presented oral argument on the post-trial motions.

This is only the latest in a series of precedent-setting trial and appellate victories SDM has obtained in Helms-Burton Act litigation. Of the eight Helms-Burton Act actions filed against Expedia Group and its affiliates, SDM has obtained complete defense wins in six of them, including the complete defense verdict SDM obtained on a $1.7 billion claim in Delaware federal court in July 2025. The other two remain pending.