Judge rules Virginia Giuffre lawsuit against Prince Andrew can go ahead

Update (Jan. 13, 2022): A judge ruled Wednesday that Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew is allowed to go ahead. The prince’s lawyers had argued a 2009 sex trafficking settlement between Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein should prevent her from suing Andrew. They also argued Giuffre’s suit lacked specificity, and attacked her credibility and motives.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the lawsuit is neither “unintelligible” nor “vague” nor “ambiguous.”

“It alleges discrete incidents of sexual abuse in particular circumstances at three identifiable locations. It identifies to whom it attributes that sexual abuse,” Kaplan wrote.

Update (Jan. 4, 2022): Lawyers for Britain’s Prince Andrew say a 2009 sex trafficking settlement between Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein should bar Giuffre from suing Andrew now. The settlement, which was made public Monday, gave Giuffre $500,000 in order to clear Epstein and anyone else “who could have been included as a potential defendant.” Andrew was not named specifically in the lawsuit.

Arguments over the request to dismiss the lawsuit between Giuffre and Prince Andrew happened Tuesday. An attorney for Andrew told a Manhattan federal court judge the settlement should release the prince “from any purported liability.”

Meanwhile, an attorney for Giuffre said the language about protecting potential defendants in the settlement was “irrelevant” to the prince’s lawsuit. David Boies cited the fact that Andrew was not mention, as well as the fact that he didn’t even know about it until the settlement was unsealed.

“He could not have been a ‘potential defendant’ in the settled case against Jeffrey Epstein both because he was not subject to jurisdiction in Florida and because the Florida case involved federal claims to which he was not a part,” Boies said in a Monday statement, according to a tweet from New York Post court reporter Ben Feurherd. “The actual parties to the release have made clear that Prince Andrew was not covered by it.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan did not immediately rule at the end of Tuesday’s arguments. However, he made it clear that he was not leaning Andrew’s way as he rejected much of the reasoning offered by the prince’s attorney.

The latest development comes less than a month after Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Epstein, was found guilty on five of six charges in her sex trafficking trial.

Original Story (Oct. 11, 2021): Britain’s Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and an associate of the deceased Jeffrey Epstein, won’t face any charges related to a woman who claims the 61-year-old Royal sexually assaulted her. The woman says the assault happened in 2001, when she was just 17 years old. Prince Andrew has denied the allegations, telling the BBC he never had sex with the woman.

Andrew is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II. London’s Metropolitan Police Department had been looking into the Duke of York since August. Sunday, the department announced its review had been completed and it would not be taking any “further action.”

Virginia Giuffre claims she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Andrew in London in 2001, when she was 17 and a minor under U.S. law. She is suing the prince in a U.S. court. The prince has until October 29 to file his response to the woman’s claims in the civil case.

U.S. authorities have previously accused Andrew of not cooperating with attempts to interview him as part of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficking ring Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are suspected of operating.

Andrew has been banished from public royal duties amid the scandal over his friendship with convicted pedophile Epstein, who was found dead in a federal detention center in New York in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.