Prince Andrew Seeks to Block Epstein Accuser’s
Lawsuit
In the first hearing in the closely watched case,
lawyers for the Duke of York argued that the lawsuit was baseless and legally
dubious.
Britain’s Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, faces a
lawsuit from Virginia Giuffre, who has accused him of sexual abuse.
Benjamin
Weiser
By Benjamin
Weiser
Sept. 13,
2021
A lawyer
for Prince Andrew, who was sued last month by a woman accusing him of sexually
abusing her when she was a minor, said in a Manhattan court on Monday that the
lawsuit was likely to be invalid under the terms of an earlier confidential
settlement — one that the prince’s lawyers have said the woman reached with
Jeffrey Epstein.
The
hearing, coming in the closely watched lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, one
of Mr. Epstein’s most prominent accusers, was the first public response from
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, and suggests that his legal team will seek to
beat back any attempt to allow the suit to proceed. Prince Andrew’s lawyer also
argued on Monday that his client had not been properly served with legal papers
in Britain.
The lawyer,
Andrew B. Brettler, said Ms. Giuffre’s lawsuit was “baseless, nonviable and
potentially unlawful.”
“We have
significant concerns about the propriety of this lawsuit,” Mr. Brettler said at
a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Ms.
Giuffre, 38, claimed in her lawsuit that Prince Andrew, 61, the second son of
Queen Elizabeth, sexually abused her when she was under 18 at Mr. Epstein’s
mansion in New York and on Mr. Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, in
the U.S. Virgin Islands.
She also
said in the suit that Prince Andrew, along with Mr. Epstein and Ghislaine
Maxwell, forced her to have sexual intercourse with Prince Andrew at Ms.
Maxwell’s home in London.
Prince
Andrew, who has denied Ms. Giuffre’s allegations, has not been charged with any
crimes, but he has long loomed over the investigation by federal prosecutors in
Manhattan of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.
Mr.
Epstein, 66, was arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, and a month
later, he was found dead by hanging in his cell in a Manhattan jail; the death
was ruled a suicide. An indictment charged that Mr. Epstein had recruited
dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him at his Manhattan
mansion and his estate in Palm Beach, after which he paid them hundreds of
dollars in cash.
Ms.
Maxwell, who was arrested in July 2020, faces trial in November on charges that
she helped Mr. Epstein recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse underage
girls. In one case, an indictment charged, she was involved in sex trafficking
a 14-year-old girl, grooming her to engage in sexual acts with Mr. Epstein and
later paying her. Ms. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Ms. Giuffre
has said in earlier court filings that Mr. Epstein had offered her several
times to Prince Andrew for sex when she was a teenager.
Ms.
Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew includes a photograph of him with his
arm around her waist, with Ms. Maxwell smiling in the background. Ms. Giuffre’s
lawsuit said the photo was taken at Ms. Maxwell's home before Prince Andrew
sexually abused her.
Other
lawyers for Prince Andrew indicated last week in a letter to Ms. Giuffre’s
lawyers that the prince would challenge the lawsuit on the grounds that Ms.
Giuffre’s lawyers had not properly served him with the complaint, a routine
step giving a defendant formal notice that he has been sued.
“We are not
instructed to appear in the claim brought by Ms. Giuffre in the Southern District
of New York and we are not instructed to accept service of that claim on behalf
of the Duke,” the lawyers, with the firm Blackfords, wrote.
The lawyers
also wrote that Ms. Giuffre’s claim against Prince Andrew may be invalid under
terms of a 2009 settlement reached in a lawsuit against Mr. Epstein in Florida.
Ms.
Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, had attached a copy of the letter from the
prince’s lawyers to a court filing on Friday. In it, Mr. Boies said the
lawyers’ suggestion that the earlier settlement “somehow releases Prince Andrew
from the claims” made by Ms. Giuffre was “erroneous,” noting that Prince Andrew
had not been a party to the earlier case.
The judge,
Lewis A. Kaplan, said in court on Monday that he would hear arguments on the
issue of whether the suit had been properly served. But he seemed to question
the utility of the effort.
“I can see
a lot of legal fees being spent and time being expended and delay, which
ultimately may not be terribly productive for anyone,” the judge said.
Susan C.
Beachy contributed research.
Benjamin
Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered
criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The
Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT
No comments:
Post a Comment