The Duke of York’s attorney has requested a stop in the civil sexual assault case against the royal in the United States because his accuser is “actually domiciled in Australia”.

Virginia Giuffre is suing the Queen’s son for sexually assaulting her as a teenager.

Andrew B Brettler, in documents filed for the Duke in New York’s Southern District Court on Tuesday, said the case should be stayed until the “matter of jurisdiction in the matter is resolved.”

Ms Giuffre alleges that she is a citizen of the State of Colorado, the evidence shows that she is indeed domiciled in Australia

“Newly uncovered evidence suggests the court has no substantive jurisdiction over this action because plaintiff Virginia L Giuffre cannot meet the elements of diversity jurisdiction,” Brettler wrote in the documents viewed. by the PA News Agency.

“Although Ms. Giuffre alleges in her complaint that she is a citizen of the state of Colorado, the evidence shows that she is actually domiciled in Australia, where she has lived for almost two of the past nineteen years.

“It is not disputed that at the time of filing this action, Ms Giuffre had an Australian driver’s license and was living in a Australian $ 1.9million (£ 1million) house in Perth, Western Australia, where she and her husband raised their three children.

“In reality, Ms. Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited. She hasn’t lived there for at least 2019 – about two years before filing that complaint against Prince Andrew – and potentially, according to her own testimony, not since October 2015.

“Although she moved to Australia in or before 2019, it appears Ms. Giuffre only recently registered to vote in Colorado using the mailing address of her mother and stepfather there.

‘In light of the apparent lack of diversity jurisdiction, Prince Andrew respectfully asks the court to order Ms Giuffre to respond to targeted written discovery requests regarding her home and submit to a two-way remote deposition. hours limited to the question of his domicile. “

It comes just over two weeks after Mr Brettler argued the case should be dismissed because Ms Giuffre has a “tortured interpretation” of the law on which she relies.

He said on December 14 that some of the alleged offenses have occurred outside of New York state and beyond the jurisdiction of the New York Child Victims Act (CVA) that it uses.

The CVA has created a 12-month window for individuals to bring civil suits seeking compensation for alleged sexual abuse they suffered as a child. The deadline was then extended by one year due to the pandemic.

Ms Giuffre is seeking unspecified damages, but there is speculation the sum could run into the millions of dollars.

She claims to have been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein into having sex with Andrew when she was 17 and a minor under US law.

The Duke has denied all the allegations.

Epstein was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial in a New York federal prison. His death was qualified as suicide.