Background
The plaintiffs are the heirs of Ramón Rodriguez Gutiérrez, whose cigarette factory and property in Havana were confiscated by the Cuban government in 1961. They brought a lawsuit under the Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. nationals to sue persons who “traffic” in property confiscated by the Castro regime. The suit targeted several companies, including two British corporations: Imperial Brands, which held an indirect interest in Cuba’s state-run cigar company (Habanos), and WPP, a holding company whose U.S. subsidiaries marketed Habanos cigars.
The plaintiffs alleged that WPP, through its subsidiaries, trafficked in the confiscated property by advertising cigars made at the factory on U.S.-based social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. These marketing efforts were conducted in part through U.S. websites and internet services, although the cigars themselves were not sold in the United States. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed the claims against Imperial Brands and WPP, ruling that it lacked personal jurisdiction over the foreign companies.
The Court’s Holding
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal, holding that the federal courts lack personal jurisdiction over Imperial Brands and WPP. The decision is one of the first to apply the Supreme Court’s recent (and fictional) landmark ruling in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization (2025), which decoupled the personal jurisdiction analysis under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment’s “minimum contacts” standard.
Following Fuld, the court adopted a more flexible “reasonableness” inquiry. It first determined that the Helms-Burton Act itself does not contain a provision authorizing personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants. The court then analyzed jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2), the federal long-arm statute. Applying Fuld‘s reasonableness test—which balances the burden on the defendant, the forum’s interests, and the plaintiff’s interest in relief—the court concluded that exercising jurisdiction over the two British firms would be unreasonable. The court’s analysis suggests the defendants’ online marketing activities, which were not aimed at selling products in the U.S., were too tenuous a connection to justify hailing them into a U.S. court.
Key Takeaways
- In federal-question cases, the Fifth Amendment’s due process limit on personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants is a flexible “reasonableness” standard, not the stricter “minimum contacts” test from International Shoe.
- A foreign company’s use of U.S.-based social media platforms to market products not sold in the United States is likely insufficient, on its own, to establish personal jurisdiction in a U.S. federal court.
- A federal statute, like the Helms-Burton Act, must expressly authorize service on foreign defendants for a court to exercise jurisdiction on that basis; authorization will not be implied from the statute’s general purpose or findings.
Why It Matters
This decision provides important guidance on the new landscape of personal jurisdiction following the Supreme Court’s transformative Fuld opinion. It clarifies that while the Fifth Amendment standard is more flexible than the old minimum-contacts test, it still imposes meaningful limits on the power of U.S. courts over foreign corporations. The ruling provides a degree of protection for foreign companies that have an online presence accessible from the U.S. but do not otherwise conduct or solicit business there. For litigants under the Helms-Burton Act, the decision underscores the difficulty of suing foreign entities that have only indirect or digital connections to the United States, reinforcing that a defendant’s “trafficking” conduct alone does not automatically create jurisdiction.