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High Court will serve Prince Andrew legal papers in sexual assault case

Prince Andrew - Chris Radburn/Reuters
Prince Andrew - Chris Radburn/Reuters

The High Court has agreed to intervene in the Duke of York’s sexual assault civil claim and will serve the lawsuit in accordance with international law.

The Duke’s lawyers wrote to judge Barbara Fontaine, senior master of the Queen’s Bench division, to ask whether she believed due process had been followed.

The court agreed that Prince Andrew had not been properly served.

However, following correspondence from lawyers representing Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the Duke’s accuser, it accepted a request to assist with service in accordance with the Hague Convention.

A judicial spokesperson told The Telegraph: “The legal process has not yet been served but the High Court will now take steps to serve under the convention, unless service is arranged by agreement between the parties.”

Ms Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, insisted in court that the Duke had already been correctly served, having had the lawsuit delivered by courier to his home in Windsor, sent to his office email address and also by Royal Mail.

During the first pre-trial hearing on Monday, Lewis Kaplan, the New York federal judge, gave Mr Boies one week to find an alternative means of service.

But he warned Andrew Brettler, the Duke’s new American lawyer, that he was making the case “more complicated” than it needed to be.

“You have a pretty high degree of certainty that he can be served sooner than later,” he said. “Let’s cut out all the technicalities and get to the substance.”

The Duke will have 21 days to respond to the claim when the judge accepts it has been officially served. The next hearing is scheduled for Oct 13.

Ms Giuffre claims she was forced to have sex with the Duke three times when she was aged 17 in New York, London and the US Virgin islands. She is suing him for undisclosed damages.

Mr Brettler forcefully rejected her claim against the Duke, describing it as “baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful”.

He has asked for access to a copy of a “secret settlement agreement” Ms Giuffre made with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2009, in which she allegedly vowed not to take further action against the financier or his associates.

The document remains sealed but is said to have prompted the dismissal, by consent, last month of Ms Giuffre’s high-profile civil claim against Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former lawyer.

Ms Giuffre, center, who says she was trafficked by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, holds a news conference in New York - Bebeto Matthews/AP
Ms Giuffre, center, who says she was trafficked by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, holds a news conference in New York - Bebeto Matthews/AP

Mr Dershowitz has now accused Ms Giuffre’s lawyers of trying to use the spectre of the settlement as “leverage” to force the Duke to appear in court.

He said they had filed the suit, “accompanied by a global media campaign,” despite knowing that the agreement made her claim invalid.

Mr Dershowitz has urged the judge in his own case, Loretta Preska, to provide a copy of the settlement to the Duke’s lawyers, warning he was “not compelled not to sit back silently knowing the content of the document at issue”.

“The issue before the Court is a matter of professional ethics and the interests of justice,” he told Judge Preska.

He said the terms of the release Ms Giuffre signed in 2009 were “broad and unambiguous”.

The Duke’s legal team remains confident that the agreement will enable them to get the claim against him struck out.

The Duke has insisted that he has “no recollection” of meeting Ms Giuffre.