Prince Andrew Likely Must Answer Sex Abuse Suit, Judge Says
Prince Andrew Likely Must Answer Sex Abuse Suit, Judge Says
(Bloomberg) -- Prince Andrew will likely be properly served “sooner or later” with legal papers requiring him to respond to a U.S. suit by a woman who claims she was recruited by Jeffrey Epstein as a teenager and “lent out” to the British royal and other men for sex, a judge in New York said Monday.
The second son of Queen Elizabeth II was served with a summons in the suit at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, on the morning of Aug. 27, according to a witness statement filed in Manhattan federal court. The prince, also known as the Duke of York, contested the legality of the service of process, through a U.S. lawyer, in a hearing Monday in Manhattan federal court.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan didn’t rule on the prince’s filing but said any success challenging the service would likely prove only temporary.
There is a “pretty high degree of certainty that he will be served properly sooner or later,” Kaplan told the lawyer, Andrew Brettler, who had earlier told the judge he was appearing on the duke’s behalf solely to contest service of process and the court’s jurisdiction over his client.
The suit was filed last month by Virginia Giuffre, who claims Prince Andrew sexually abused her in Epstein’s New York home, on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Prince Andrew has denied he ever had sex with Giuffre.
The British royal must be properly served with court papers informing him of the suit for the U.S. court to have jurisdiction over him. Kaplan, Brettler and Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, discussed a timeline for determining whether the judge will ask U.K. authorities for help in serving the papers on Prince Andrew.
The case is Giuffre v. Prince Andrew, Duke of York, 21-cv-06702, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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