NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has given the green light to a lawsuit by an American woman who says Prince Andrew sexually abused her when she was 17.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote in an opinion Wednesday that Andrew's lawyers failed to successfully challenge the constitutionality of the lawsuit Virginia Giuffre filed against him in August.
His lawyers had said that the lawsuit lacked specificity and was disqualified by a deal she reached in 2009 with lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein.
That settlement of a lawsuit was reached a decade before Epstein killed himself at a Manhattan lockup as he awaited a sex trafficking trial.
Kaplan said that the $500,000 settlement between Epstein and Giuffre didn’t involve the prince and didn’t bar a suit against him now, the Associated Press reported.
Kaplan added that the agreement between the two parties was “far from a model of clear and precise drafting,” the news outlet reported.
Andrew denies the allegations.
Epstein's longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted in December of sex trafficking and conspiracy charges in federal court in New York.
