Prince Andrew asks US court to dismiss lawsuit
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Prince Andrew asks US court to dismiss lawsuit

PRINCE Andrew has asked a New York court to throw out the case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre.

Attorneys acting on the prince’s behalf of the Duke of York said that Andrew “respectfully moves to dismiss plaintiff Virginia Giuffre's complaint.”

They said the "baseless lawsuit" should be dismissed because Ms Giuffre, 38, has failed to sufficiently outline her claims that the prince sexually assaulted over 20 years ago.

Ms Guiffre was 17 at the time of the alleged assault, and so considered a minor under US law.

The Queen's 61-year-old son has not been criminally charged and consistently denied the allegations.

Despite Ms Guiffre being fairly explicit in her accusations against Andrew in a number of TV documentaries and interviews, the prince’s lawyers said that if a dismissal is not granted, Ms Giuffre should provide a "more definitive statement" of her allegations.

In September, the duke finally accepted that he had been served legal papers after a long stint at Windsor Castle, his mother’s royal bolthole in Scotland.

Prince Andrew and his legal team had until 29 October to respond to the lawsuit.

The Telegraph recently reported that the prince’s lawyers claimed Ms Guiffre is trying to “achieve another payday at his [Andrew’s] expense”.

Commenting on the controversy, commissioner of the Met police Dame Cressida Dick said: "It's been reviewed twice before, we've worked closely with the CPS, we are of course open to working with authorities from overseas, we will give them every assistance if they ask us for anything - within the law, obviously - and as a result of what's going on I've asked my team to have another look at the material.

"No one is above the law," she added.

The Met subsequently decided not to press charges.