Prince Andrew served with lawsuit from Jeffrey
Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre
A US court document showed paperwork
was filed at Royal Lodge and a response is due by 17 September
Prince Andrew
has been served with an affidavit for a lawsuit from Jeffrey Epstein accuser
Virginia Giuffre.
Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Fri 10 Sep 2021
20.01 BST
Prince Andrew has been served with an affidavit for a lawsuit from
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges she was forced to have sex with the royal
when she was 17 years old.
A document filed in a US court on Friday
showed that paperwork for Giuffre’s lawsuit was filed at Andrew’s home, Royal
Lodge, in Windsor on 27 August. The affidavit was accepted by a Metropolitan
police officer at the gates of the property at 9.30am, after the agent filing
the document had been turned away the previous day, according to the documents.
Court documents show that a response is now
due from Andrew by 17 September.
Buckingham Palace referred the Guardian on to
an external PR agency who represent the Duke of York who were contacted for
comment.
Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Andrew in
August. She accused Andrew of sexually abusing her at the home of Ghislaine
Maxwell in London and on three occasions in the US in 2001.
Andrew has “absolutely and categorically”
denied having sex with Roberts and Buckingham Palace has called the claims
“false and without foundation”.
The legal claim alleges that Giuffre “was
compelled by express or implied threats by Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell, and/or
Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or
physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying
Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth
and authority”.
The lawsuit further claims that Andrew knew
she was a sex-trafficking victim, and that she has suffered – and continues to
suffer – “significant emotional and psychological distress and harm”.
Maxwell, who is facing trial in New York in
November, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges regarding her
alleged involvement with Epstein.
In August it was reported that Andrew is
considered a “person of interest” in the investigation into Epstein, who died
in jail in 2019, and Maxwell.
The phrase “person of interest” is used by law
enforcement to refer to someone who has not been arrested or formally accused
of any crime, but can refer to someone who may have information that would
assist the investigation.
US court to hold pretrial conference in Prince
Andrew sexual assault suit
Lawyers claiming to represent Duke of York question
whether papers were properly served
Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied the allegations in
the lawsuit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Associated
Press
Sat 11 Sep
2021 19.10 BST
A US court
will hold a pretrial conference on Monday in the civil suit filed by a woman
who claims Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her, as the two sides argue over
whether the prince was properly served with documents in the case.
Lawyers for
Virginia Roberts Giuffre say the documents were handed over to a Metropolitan
police officer on duty at the main gates of Andrew’s home in Windsor Great Park
on 27 August.
But
Blackfords, a law firm that claims to represent Andrew “in certain UK matters”,
has questioned whether the papers were properly served and raised the
possibility of challenging the court’s jurisdiction in the case, according to a
6 September letter referenced in court documents filed by Giuffre’s attorneys.
“We
reiterate that our client reserves all his rights, including to contest the
jurisdiction of the US courts (including on the basis of potentially defective
service),” they wrote.
A US judge
will ultimately determine whether the papers were properly delivered. Judge
Lewis Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York
will hold the first pretrial conference in the case via teleconference on
Monday.
The prince
has repeatedly denied the allegations in the lawsuit brought by Giuffre, 38, a
longtime accuser of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
When the
suit was filed last month, legal experts suggested it left Andrew with no good
options as he seeks to repair his image and return to public life.
If the
prince tries to ignore the lawsuit, he runs the risk that the court could find
him in default and order him to pay damages. If he decides to fight, Andrew
faces years of sordid headlines as the case winds its way through court.
Guiffre’s
lawyer, David Boies, said in court documents that it was implausible that
Andrew was unaware of the suit.
“Attorneys
at Blackfords, who he has apparently instructed to evade and contest service, have
confirmed that Prince Andrew himself already has notice of this lawsuit and is
evaluating his chances of success,” Boies wrote.
“And even
if Blackfords had not confirmed as much, any other conclusion would be
implausible – reputable media outlets around the world reported on the filing
of plaintiff’s complaint, and hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about
this lawsuit have been published.”
The lawsuit
is another unwanted story for the royals, reminding the public of Andrew’s
links to Epstein two years after his death.
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
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