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Split Thread Virginia Guiffre v Duke of York

If the lawyers are funding it, they will be doing so on a no win no fee basis. I don't think Giuffre has the resources to fund a transnational court case herself. Perhaps there are well wishers or donors who fund it and expect no return, but it seems unlikely, since if she wins she would be awarded costs. The usual return lawyers look for on a no win no fee basis is about 30% of damages.

The reference is to the fact that financing potentially lucrative court cases is now an investment option, and I think there will be concern from the Royal family that they are not seen as an easy target.

The talk about Giuffre wanting 'more than money' strikes me a negotiating ploy.

Giuffre had a long time to bring the court case, she is not a victim who has only recently come to the realisation she was abused or can bring a claim. She has brought cases against several people over many years. It is slightly odd that she only does so against Windsor now. Perhaps as has been said it was just a plubicity stunt by a New York lawyer looking for a famous (and rich) person to sue and a suitable plaintiff and they got in at the last moment as the extension on the usual time bar for litigation was just about to run out.

You could have just said 'I have none'.
 
If the lawyers are funding it, they will be doing so on a no win no fee basis. I don't think Giuffre has the resources to fund a transnational court case herself. Perhaps there are well wishers or donors who fund it and expect no return, but it seems unlikely, since if she wins she would be awarded costs. The usual return lawyers look for on a no win no fee basis is about 30% of damages.

The reference is to the fact that financing potentially lucrative court cases is now an investment option, and I think there will be concern from the Royal family that they are not seen as an easy target.

The talk about Giuffre wanting 'more than money' strikes me a negotiating ploy.
Giuffre had a long time to bring the court case, she is not a victim who has only recently come to the realisation she was abused or can bring a claim. She has brought cases against several people over many years. It is slightly odd that she only does so against Windsor now. Perhaps as has been said it was just a plubicity stunt by a New York lawyer looking for a famous (and rich) person to sue and a suitable plaintiff and they got in at the last moment as the extension on the usual time bar for litigation was just about to run out.

Lots of speculation here. Again, based on what? What you would do? She's not you.

And I repeat, her lawyers don't need the business. Maybe she's just tired of the son of the Queen of England insisting that she's a crazy liar.
 
His lifestyle would certainly suggest he is considerably more wealthy than his Royal Navy pension would account for. He gets 1/4mil pa tax free from the Queen, that we know of, has been involved with some iffy companies & of course we don't know how much from cash for access before he was busted.* His net worth is estimated between 10 & 32 million pounds.



* "...And What Do You Do?" - Norman Baker

None of the Queen's children (excluding Charles) have a particularly lavish lifestyle, Anne or Edward for example. This is part of the issue with Andrew, why he skived off people like Epstein or traded on his connections, because the Queen is quite frugal and does not give a lot of money to the children. My guess is he has far less assets than some people think. Most peoples biggest assets are real estate and he does not have that. There may be a fair list of creditors wanting payment before he has to pay Giuffre including his own lawyers. There is no guarantee since he is no longer a working royal, and has married off his daughters, that his allowance will remain as large as it has been.

Would the Queen be prepared to see him go bankrupt? Bankruptcy is less onerous I think in the UK than in the US, if he went bankrupt he could ask the court that he not be liable for some or all of any damages, he may be very likely to not have to pay punitive damages because UK courts do not recognise punitive damages. I guess it would depend on whether it was thought that the Queen would suffer damage by not paying the penalty for the misbehaviour of her son.
 
None of the Queen's children (excluding Charles) have a particularly lavish lifestyle, Anne or Edward for example. This is part of the issue with Andrew, why he skived off people like Epstein or traded on his connections, because the Queen is quite frugal and does not give a lot of money to the children. My guess is he has far less assets than some people think. Most peoples biggest assets are real estate and he does not have that. There may be a fair list of creditors wanting payment before he has to pay Giuffre including his own lawyers. There is no guarantee since he is no longer a working royal, and has married off his daughters, that his allowance will remain as large as it has been.

??? He recently cleared an outstanding debt on a Swiss chalet that's worth some £18m. £18m-worth of Swiss chalet is not a 'real estate asset'?
 
Lots of speculation here. Again, based on what? What you would do? She's not you.

And I repeat, her lawyers don't need the business. Maybe she's just tired of the son of the Queen of England insisting that she's a crazy liar.

Maybe she is fed up, but some one needs to pay the costs, and it will not be cheap. Even if legal advice is pro bono, the court costs, witness fees, secretarial services will mount up. The eighty year old rich lawyer may not want paid, all the others involved will do. Although given he represented Theranos and got paid in shares he may not be worth quite as much as he was. I guess it may depend is he funding it himself, or is it the law firm, if it is the law firm then they may be a bit more hard nosed.
 
??? He recently cleared an outstanding debt on a Swiss chalet that's worth some £18m. £18m-worth of Swiss chalet is not a 'real estate asset'?

I thought he sold it to clear the debts? An asset he no longer has. The cash may well have been dispersed. He has Sarah, Beatrice and Eugenie to keep in frocks.
 
??? He recently cleared an outstanding debt on a Swiss chalet that's worth some £18m. £18m-worth of Swiss chalet is not a 'real estate asset'?
That's not in evidence. Given his extremely dubious past "friends" and their subsidies (David Rowland for example) there is no guarantee that he paid the money owed from his own funds. A debt he's been trying to evade for years.
 
That's not in evidence. Given his extremely dubious past "friends" and their subsidies (David Rowland for example) there is no guarantee that he paid the money owed from his own funds. A debt he's been trying to evade for years.


The owner says the debt has been cleared.
She added: “It was about six weeks ago that the matter was closed. It was November. The second payment needed to be paid and that payment is now done. That’s it. You can be sure that’s it. It’s done.”
.....
The prince is now selling the property as he faces the lawsuit brought against him by Giuffre, who alleges she was forced to have sex with the royal on three occasions after she was trafficked by the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has denied the allegations.
.....
Until the debt was settled, Andrew was unable to sell it. It is understood a buyer has been found and the sale is proceeding, but not yet completed.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/11/prince-andrew-sell-swiss-chalet
 
I thought he sold it to clear the debts? An asset he no longer has. The cash may well have been dispersed. He has Sarah, Beatrice and Eugenie to keep in frocks.

No. He cleared the debt in order to be able to sell it. It's on public record. Why did you make your claim without checking? It would have taken only a minute.

(thank you to other posters for confirming this)

eta: And the sale has yet to be made, so the cash has not been 'dispersed'. As of today he has found a buyer it seems.
 
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No. He cleared the debt in order to be able to sell it. It's on public record. Why did you make your claim without checking? It would have taken only a minute.

(thank you to other posters for confirming this)

eta: And the sale has yet to be made, so the cash has not been 'dispersed'. As of today he has found a buyer it seems.

The usual course is that the sale of the property clears mortgages / claims due on the property. It would not be usual to pay the debts before selling, but as part of the sale process. The point I was trying to make is he does not have the odd £millions to pay off the debt prior to selling this property. He is not cash rich. We cannot assume that there are not other debts on the property. He was always dependant on others for hospitality etc.

Giuffre appears to have no other form of livelihood than litigation (she may make money from interviews articles etc.). My assertion is that Windsor as an individual is not very wealthy, and may be considerably less wealthy by the end of any trial as transnational litigation is very expensive. Giuffre's lawyer may be working pro bono, but given the client is wealthy and the case is one that fees can be claimed on (and will be very costly) it seems more likely that this will be a contingency fee arrangement.

Of particular note is that (assuming Windsor has no assets outside of the UK) any award by the court has then to be enforced as a debt in the English courts. Punitive damages will not be recognised. Arguably with regards to if Windsor had sex with Giuffre in London it may be against public policy to allow a New York court to award damages for a 'criminal act' in London that was legal in London.

It may be the sole act she will be seeking compensation for is the act(s) that occurred in New York, and the events in London and USVI will be evidence of a pattern of abuse but not directly compensatable by the court.

One reason that Windsor is likely to defend vigorously is that he remains vulnerable to a criminal charge of rape in the USVI. Any admission he had sex with Giuffre would leave him vulnerable to criminal charges. Unlike New York there is no statute of limitations.
 
I suspect the true state of affairs is somewhat different from the suggestions here so far.

Firstly, I think that the Queen had already pledged to fund Andrew for as much as it would take to make it go away. And I think a conditional "decision tree" pair of scenarios was formulated and agreed by all parties within the Royal Family, well in advance of the judicial ruling last week.

I think that (rather obviously) Scenario 1 was if the judge threw out Giuffre's lawsuit in its entirety: I think that had that happened, the Queen would have covered all outstanding legal fees, and Andrew would - after a suitable waiting period of a couple of years or so - have been able to make a very limited return to public life.

And I think that Scenario 2 covered every other possibility (and note here that the judge didn't actually throw out Andrew's motion for dismissal last week - he merely ruled that this was the wrong point in the proceedings to assess the motion).

So..... whether the judge had thrown Andrew's motion out entirely last week, or whether he'd simply deferred a ruling on the motion (which is actually what happened), I think Scenario 2 went live in either case.

And Scenario 2 is "make this go away, as quietly and as quickly as possible, and the Queen will pay as much as it takes to make that happen". But the (pre-agreed) quid-pro-quo of this scenario was the cutting loose of Andrew (which is why that happened so quickly and brutally last week, hot on the heels of the judicial ruling: it had all been worked out, and agreed to by all parties, in advance).

My confident prediction is that within a month or so, Andrew will settle out of court (using the Queen's money), without any admission of culpability. It's worth noting at this point that when Giuffre's lawyer says things like "she wants her day in court" or "she wants the truth to come out".... this - more often than not - is simply posturing as a tactic to extract more money in an out-of-court settlement. Everyone has their price, and I cast-iron guarantee that there will be a sum of money that is sufficiently acceptable to Giuffre to engineer a no-fault OOC settlement.

It will almost certainly be a very large sum of money - maybe in the high two-figure millions. But I predict that the Queen, whose courtiers and bankers will probably have started on the financial engineering and asset liquidation months ago, will readily pony up in order to a) protect the image and reputation(!) of the Royal Family, and b) clear this thing off the table well before the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations take place.

As I said, I think that the moment the judge didn't grant Andrew's motion to dismiss last week, a previously-arranged/agreed and well-choreographed process kicked in. And that all parties in the RF - including the Queen, Charles, William and Andrew - already knew the plan in advance: that Andrew would hand back his HRH and his patronages, and that the Queen would agree to pay whatever it took to settle out of court on a no-fault basis.
 
...snip...

As I said, I think that the moment the judge didn't grant Andrew's motion to dismiss last week, a previously-arranged/agreed and well-choreographed process kicked in. And that all parties in the RF - including the Queen, Charles, William and Andrew - already knew the plan in advance: that Andrew would hand back his HRH and his patronages, and that the Queen would agree to pay whatever it took to settle out of court on a no-fault basis.

No he hasn't - he just won't use it officially anymore. In terms of who must bow to who in the family and all that stupid, meaningless crap the royal family wraps itself in hasn't changed.
 

Okay, the defense is at the "Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks," phase. There is photographic evidence of the plaintiff, the defendant and a now convicted sex offender who was found guilty of arranging sex for another convicted sex offenders' guest. The defendant was one of said sex offender's guests. I see problems with the recovered memory defense. This dog won't hunt.
 
Coming back to Andriano, isn't the important part of her story that she can testify to an early statement that Giuffre had sex with Andrew well before any litigation was in motion?

If this holds up then it could argue against the false memory claim since it happened close to the events.

It would seem to me that establishing that sex actually happened is the real sticking point now.
 
Okay, the defense is at the "Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks," phase. There is photographic evidence of the plaintiff, the defendant and a now convicted sex offender who was found guilty of arranging sex for another convicted sex offenders' guest. The defendant was one of said sex offender's guests. I see problems with the recovered memory defense. This dog won't hunt.

Sounds like another payday for Dr. Loftus.
 
If this holds up then it could argue against the false memory claim since it happened close to the events.

It would seem to me that establishing that sex actually happened is the real sticking point now.

I think there are two issues.

The first is did some sort of (criminal) sexual act occur. The second did it result in harm. Both are required for compensation to be awarded.

The significance of Andriano's testimony is that Giuffre boasted about having sex with a Prince, and far from appearing hurt or upset by the encounter she was pleased with herself for having done so. This would also imply she was not an unwilling* partner in the interaction.

It is entirely legitimate for the defence to run a two track argument; 1) I never had sex with that woman Giuffre, 2) Even if the court rules I did she suffered no significant harm so any damages should be minimal.

As part of minimising the damages that Windsor will be liable for I think the strategy is to say that she was abused from an early age within her family, that she was the 'girl friend' of a professional sex trafficker when she was fourteen. That the trauma and psychological harm she had suffered had already occurred by the time the alleged sexual interactions occurred. To put it crudely when Windsor met her she was already damaged goods and he caused no additional damage.

* I appreciate the argument that she may not have had free agency to make decisions about her own body in the particular situation she found herself in, but if it appeared to Windsor she had agency and at least in New York and London she was above age of consent then this is important in minimising his responsibility for any harm she suffered.
 

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