ROYALSPrince Andrew's Lawyer Seeks To Halt Virginia Giuffre Lawsuit As The Accuser 'Lives In Australia'
Prince Andrew's lawyer has challenged his accuser's residency status.
As previously reported by OK!, Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit against the Duke of York earlier this year. She alleged that she was forced to have sex with the 61-year-old on three occasions in London, New York and on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean when she was a minor. Andrew has denied the allegations.
According to The Guardian, Andrew's lawyer Andrew B. Brettler filed documents in the southern district court of New York on Tuesday, December 28. In the documents, the attorney reportedly called for the case to be halted until the "issue of subject matter jurisdiction is adjudicated."
According to the filing, "inconsistent pleadings from Ms. Giuffre's various lawsuits and other documentary evidence" suggest that "she is not a citizen of Colorado," Sky News reported.
"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," he wrote, per The Guardian. "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."
According to the attorney, the accuser had an Australian driver's licence and was living in Perth with her husband and children when she filed to suit.
"In reality, Ms Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited," he wrote. "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."
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He claimed that the 38-year-old registered to vote in Colorado recently using her mother and stepfather's mailing address, the outlet noted.
"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," he noted.
In October, Andrew's legal team released a statement denying the allegations. "Virginia Giuffre may well be a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and nothing can excuse, nor fully capture, the abhorrence and gravity of Epstein’s monstrous behaviour against Giuffre, if so," the statement read. "However, and without diminishing the harm suffered as a result of Epstein’s alleged misconduct, Prince Andrew never sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre."
A hearing is reportedly scheduled for the case on January 4.
In October, Andrew's legal team filed documents asking for US district judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss the case, Sky News reported. The documents claimed the allegations against the royal are "baseless."
