Prince Andrew sex accuser Virginia Giuffre may not be able to sue the embattled royal in New York because she actually lives in Australia, his lawyers argued in a court filing Tuesday, December 28, 2021.
In her complaint against the Duke of York, Giuffre claims to live in Colorado — but she actually resides in a $1.9 million home in Australia with her longtime husband, lawyers for Andrew argued in the letter filed as part of her Manhattan federal-court civil suit.
“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,” the court filing states.
Because of the apparent discrepancy, Andrew’s lawyers have asked the judge to require her to answer written questions about her residency and to sit for a two-hour sworn deposition about the issue.
If Giuffre does in fact live in Australia, she lacks the ability to sue the royal in New York through “diversity jurisdiction,” the prince’s lawyers wrote.
Diversity jurisdiction allows US citizens to sue other Americans and foreign nationals in federal court but does not extend to Americans who live abroad, the lawyers said.
Giuffre, a longtime Jeffrey Epstein accuser, sued Prince Andrew in Manhattan federal court in August, claiming she was trafficked to the royal by Epstein and his accused madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.
In one incident detailed in the suit, Giuffre says she was forced to have sex with the prince at Maxwell’s London home.
“During this encounter, Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew forced Plaintiff, a child, to have sexual intercourse with Prince Andrew against her will,” the suit states.
In November, Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, said he intends to depose up to a dozen people as part of the suit, including the prince himself.
Last week, Boies told Fox News that Meghan Markle — who is married to the royal’s nephew, Prince Harry — could also be among those deposed in the suit.
“We want to have at least a couple of depositions of people who knew Prince Andrew and were sort of members of his inner circle at various times and who might have either have the knowledge themselves or have knowledge about people who would have the knowledge,” Boies told the news channel.
“Meghan Markle, because of her position in the family, is one of those people,” he said.
“And because she’s in the United States, it’s easier to take her deposition than people in the United Kingdom. She is somebody who we are considering,” Boies added.
