Federal Judge Robert N. Scola yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed against Amazon, covered by Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. The electronic commerce giant had asked the judge to reject the lawsuit filed by Daniel A. Gonz\u00e1lez, grandson of the late Miguel Gonz\u00e1lez Rodr\u00edguez, who with the Revolution lost an 810-hectare estate in the then-Orient province, where vegetable coal is produced today with marab\u00fa.<\/p>\n
Gonz\u00e1lez also sued Susshi International, a Florida-based company, for selling the coal, which can also be purchased on Amazon, produced on the Oriente-based estate under the Fogo brand.<\/p>\n
Judge Scola had dismissed the lawsuit in first instance, but offered Gonz\u00e1lez the option to modify it, which his lawyers did, but even so they didn\u2019t achieve their purpose, as demonstrated by the judicial decision issued today.<\/p>\n
Basically the main reason why Scola decided that the lawsuit cannot continue to be processed is that Gonz\u00e1lez was unable to demonstrate that he meets the requirement to own the rights to property confiscated since before March 12, 1996, when the Helms-Burton Act was passed.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit had been filed in September 2019 by Gonz\u00e1lez, who alleged that \u201cAmazon profited from and trafficked with the confiscated property by selling on its website coal produced on the property\u201d that belonged to his grandfather, which was inherited by his father and later his mother, who transferred the property rights in 2016, as it appears in the amended text.<\/p>\n
Amazon alleged that both the initial and amended lawsuits lacked \u201clegal merit\u201d to pursue the case, and therefore requested that it be rejected.<\/p>\n
The judge ruled at first instance that the case suffered from \u201ctwo defects, the plaintiff doesn\u2019t have an ownership interest in the land that he alleges was confiscated by the Cuban government and was unable to demonstrate that Amazon knowingly and intentionally trafficked\u201d with coal from those lands.<\/p>\n
However, Gonz\u00e1lez replied that Amazon\u2019s arguments are \u201cincompatible\u201d with the text and purpose of the law and the term \u201cacquire\u201d has other different dimensions in these cases of expropriated Cubans which involve property and inherited cases.<\/p>\n
The judge ruled today that Gonz\u00e1lez had two opportunities to support his claim and was unable to do so and \u201cit would appear that any other amendment would be futile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Title III of the Helms-Burton Act turns one year in force<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n