Prince Andrew fails to halt sexual assault lawsuit with domicile claim
1 January 2022, 19:50 | Updated: 1 January 2022, 19:54
A US judge has denied a motion from Prince Andrew's lawyers to halt proceedings in a civil lawsuit while an issue of where his accuser lives is dealt with.
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Andrew's lawyers called for the case to be stopped because Virginia Giuffre is "actually domiciled in Australia".
However, Judge Lewis Kaplan, in a ruling in New York, denied the request, stating that Ms Giuffre's legal team has previously received "at least one comprehensive request for documents relating to her domicile, to which responses are due, and have been promised, by January 14".
The judge added that his ruling was being made "without determining the merit, or lack of merit" of an assertion by Ms Giuffre's team that Andrew's lawyers' motion was "a transparent attempt to delay discovery into his own documents and testimony".
It comes after Andrew was asked to provide evidence of his alleged inability to sweat by Ms Giuffre's lawyers.
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Ms Giuffre is suing the prince for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.
She claims she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with Andrew, and was pictured with the royal and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell during the period the alleged intercourse took place.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted in the US on Wednesday of helping to entice vulnerable teenagers to the properties of Epstein, her former boyfriend, for him to sexually abuse between 1994 and 2004.
She was labelled "dangerous" by the prosecution and faces the rest of her life in jail.
Her friendship with Andrew has seen renewed scrutiny of Ms Giuffre's civil claim for damages against him.
Ms Giuffre alleged in the past that she had sex with Andrew in London and New York when she was aged 17 - a minor under US law - and again aged 18 on a private Caribbean island owned by Epstein.
Andrew has denied all allegations.
