Prince Andrew’s lawyer says accuser cannot sue in US as ‘she lives in Australia’

Prince’s legal team asks judge to halt proceedings in civil case brought by Virginia Giuffre

Prince Andrew has consistently denied all accusations of sexual abuse (AP)

In a bid to have his accuser’s civil case thrown out of court in New York, the Duke of York has challenged Virginia Giuffre’s status as a US resident.

The prince’s lawyer, Andrew B Brettler, has called for a halt in the civil sexual assault proceedings against the royal as he claims that Ms Giuffre lives in Australia, not in the US as her legal filings suggest.

Ms Giuffre, 38, has claimed that she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with the prince when she was 17 and legally a minor under US law. She is suing the prince in the Southern District Court of New York and alleges that the sexual abuse occurred in the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as in Mr Epstein’s New York townhouse and his private island in the Caribbean.

Prince Andrew has categorically denied these claims.

If the prince’s legal team can successfully prove that Ms Giuffre is not a US resident, the Southern District Court will no longer have jurisdiction over the case as federal court rules do not permit both parties in any legal action to be foreign citizens.

On Tuesday, in court documents seen by the PA news agency, the prince’s lawyer Andrew B Brettler, said that the case should be stopped until the “issue of subject matter jurisdiction is adjudicated”.

He added: “Recently discovered evidence suggests that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over this action because Plaintiff Virginia L Giuffre cannot satisfy the elements of diversity jurisdiction.

“Notwithstanding that, in her complaint, Ms Giuffre alleges she is a citizen of the state of Colorado, the evidence demonstrates that she is actually domiciled in Australia, where she has lived for all but two of the past 19 years.

“It is undisputed that, at the time she filed this action, Ms Giuffre had an Australian driver’s licence and was living in a 1.9m Australian dollar (£1m) home in Perth, Western Australia, where she and her husband have been raising their three children.

“In reality, Ms Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited. She has not lived there since at least 2019 – approximately two years before she filed this lawsuit against Prince Andrew – and potentially, according to her own deposition testimony, not since October 2015.

“Despite having moved to Australia in 2019 or earlier, it appears that Ms Giuffre only recently registered to vote in Colorado using her mother and stepfather’s mailing address there.

“In light of the apparent lack of diversity jurisdiction, Prince Andrew respectfully requests that the Court order Ms Giuffre to respond to targeted written discovery requests pertaining to her domicile and submit to a two-hour remote deposition limited to the issue of her domicile.”

In filing these court documents, the prince’s legal team have asked Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the court proceedings, to suspend the case until Ms Giuffre responds.

The Times reported that in response, Sigrid McCawley, Ms Giuffre’s lawyer, complained in a letter that the prince’s lawyer’s only raised the issue days ahead of a deadline in the case. She added that Ms Giuffre “will be able to establish” that the New York federal court could hear her case.

A hearing date is currently set for 4 January 2022.

This latest court filing from Mr Brettler follows another that suggested the case should be thrown out as not all alleged abuses took place in New York state, where the New York Child Victims Act is active, which Ms Giuffre is using in her lawsuit.

The Act enables individuals to file civil lawsuits seeking compensation for alleged sexual abuse they suffered as children. Under it, Ms Giuffre is seeking unspecified damages, but it is possible that the sum could be in the millions of dollars.