docks

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Thursday broadly upheld lawsuits by U.S. companies whose property was seized in Cuba prior to 1960, including claims against cruise ship lines that docked there in the past decade.

These suits do not seek compensation from Cubans but from those who “traffic in property which was confiscated by the Cuban government.”

In a 8-1 decision, the justices revived a $400-million judgment against four cruise lines whose ships stopped in Havana between 2016 and 2019.

All of them used docks that were built early in the 20th century by the Havana Docks Corporation, an American company.

Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to a rarely enforced 1996 law that authorized suits against those who “use property tainted by a past confiscation.”

Past presidents had suspended enforcement of the law, but President Trump allowed such claims to go forward.

That change in policy exposed “traffickers in confiscated property of United States nationals” to brings claims in federal courts, Thomas said.

The four cruise line companies — Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Carnival Corporation, and MSC Cruises — transported nearly a million paid passengers to Cuba, he wrote.

They paid the Cuban government tens of millions of dollars to do business in Cuba. They collectively earned hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from voyages that included a stop in Havana, he said.

A federal judge in Florida ordered each of the cruise lines to pay $100 million in damages, but the U.S. appeals court in Atlanta blocked the decision by a 2-1 vote. It said Havana Docks Corporation had a contract to run the docks had expired in 2004.

Justice Elena Kagan made the same argument in dissent.

She said “the docks belonged to the Cuban Government — not Havana Docks — all along. What Havana Docks owned was only a property interest allowing it to use those docks for a specified time. And that time-limited interest expired in 2004 — more than a decade before the cruise lines ever used the docks.”

Still pending before the court is a similar claim from Exxon Mobil Corp., which was argued on the day in late February.

MV Hondius was carrying 25 crew members and two medical personnel as it reached the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

A cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak has docked in the Netherlands for disinfection.

The MV Hondius was carrying 25 crew members and two medical personnel as it reached the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Monday, after all the passengers disembarked at other locations. According to the ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions, no one on board is experiencing any symptoms.

A short distance from where the ship docked, authorities had set up white containers along the water. The crew will enter immediate quarantine, with those who cannot be immediately repatriated spending their time in quarantine in these containers.

Three passengers of the ship died, including a Dutch couple who health officials believe were the first exposed to the virus while visiting South America.

The MV Hondius has spent the past six days sailing from the Canary Islands, where the remaining passengers were evacuated and boarded flights to more than 20 countries to enter quarantine.

There were at least 11 cases of infection on the ship, nine of which have been confirmed.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said one of the four Canadians in isolation after leaving the ship had tested positive on Sunday. It said it would share information on the case with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Late Sunday, the WHO said it was maintaining its assessment of the hantavirus outbreak as “low risk”.

“While additional cases may still occur among passengers and crew members exposed before containment measures were implemented, the risk of onward transmission is expected to be reduced following disembarkation and the implementation of control measures,” it said.

Crew members who are unable to return home will be quarantined in the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport said last week. Some two dozen passengers and crew members have already been in quarantine in the Netherlands after arriving in the country on different flights in the last two weeks.

After everyone on board has disembarked, the ship will be decontaminated based on Dutch public health guidelines.

“Personal protective measures are being taken to ensure that the cleaners do not need to quarantine after the cleaning,” the Health Ministry said in a letter to the Dutch parliament last week.

Public health officials will inspect the ship before it is allowed to sail again. The hantavirus outbreak on Hondius is the first known case on a cruise ship.

France’s Pasteur Institute said on Saturday it has fully sequenced the Andes virus detected in a French passenger from the Hondius and found that it matched viruses already known in South America, with no evidence so far of new characteristics that would make it more transmissible or more dangerous.

May 10 (UPI) — A cruise ship stricken with a hantavirus outbreak is evacuating its nearly 150 passengers in the Spanish island Tenerife on Sunday.

The MV Hondius docked in Tenerife Sunday morning to begin evacuating passengers who will be sent to their home countries. A small boat is being used to transport passengers to shore where they are received by a medical tent.

The first group of passengers left Tenerife on Sunday morning by plane. Fourteen Spanish passengers were boarded on a plane bound for Madrid.

Passengers were seen in face masks and full-body personal protective equipment. They have been isolated from the general public during transport off the vessel.

Before being released from the ship, passengers were screened for symptoms and all were asymptomatic.

The next group of passengers to leave the island will be passengers from the Netherlands, Spain’s health minister Monica Garcia said. Some crew members will also be part of that flight.

Passengers from the United States are set to be received at the University of Nebraska Medical Center where they will be monitored. It is a one-of-a-kind medical facility in the United States with specially designed rooms for the purpose of monitoring.

Three cruise ship passengers have died from hantavirus infection, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Chile has reported a fatality rate of 33% in hantavirus cases this year. Last year it confirmed 44 cases and eight deaths.