The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Alan Gross, the government contractor who wound up serving five years in a Cuban jail, and who now wants to sue Washington for negligence.
The ruling upheld a decision in District of Columbia federal court which threw out Gross' suit seeking $60 million in compensation.
Gross spent five years in Cuban jails after distributing laptops and communications equipment to the island's small Jewish community as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Cuba's Communist government tried and convicted Gross for crimes against state security, sentencing him to 15 years.
He was finally freed on Dec. 17, 2014 — the day Havana and Washington announced they would reverse decades of Cold War bad blood, and seek to restore full diplomatic ties.