Ms Giuffre, now 38, claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions in 2001, when she was 17, in London, New York and on Epstein’s private Caribbean island. She is seeking unspecified damages.

The remote hearing currently represents the Duke’s only chance to have the case dismissed. Should he fail, he faces the prospect of a lengthy discovery and deposition process, which could involve close members of the family and his police protection officers, ahead of a trial in the autumn.

The Duke is thought unlikely to dial in to the mid-afternoon hearing, which is expected to last around an hour, and will instead wait to be briefed by his legal team immediately afterwards. It is thought that Judge Kaplan will either make his decision known at the end of the hearing or hand down a written ruling within days.

If he loses, Mr Brettler has asked Ms Giuffre to provide more detail about her allegations, claiming her lawsuit is “ambiguous and wholly devoid of factual allegations” concerning the New York incident.

The Duke’s legal team received a setback last week when a request to halt proceedings to enable them to investigate Ms Giuffre’s residency status was denied. They argued that, because she lived in Australia, the New York federal court could not hear the case. However, the potential for a legal challenge to the court’s jurisdiction remains on the table.

It comes as the Duke faces unprecedented pressure following the conviction of his close friend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking charges last week.

Maxwell is an undeniably central figure in his case. It was at her London mews house that Ms Giuffre claims she was raped by the Duke in March 2001, having been trafficked from New York. The Duke has categorically denied allegations