Prince Andrew Has Three Options. He Loses Whatever He Does.
The case can now proceed. Andrew essentially has three options: settle, fight the case, or scoff at the law from behind palace walls.
Although Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies has previously said that his client is
not pursuing the case for financial reasons, and wants Andrew held to account rather than a pay-off, the practical pressure to accept such an offer would be considerable. The law
specifies that if Andrew made a substantial offer, Giuffre would have to accept it or risk being hit with millions of dollars of legal fees if she were awarded a lesser amount.
But even if Andrew wanted to pay to settle out of court, there are question marks over whether he could afford to do that.
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Option two,
fighting the case all the way to the bitter end, is probably a deeply unappealing prospect to Andrew.
As Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies
told The Daily Beast Wednesday, the case proceeding would mean that, “Prince Andrew will give evidence.” At first this would be in the form of a deposition. But the truth is that being deposed about his sex life is unlikely to be high on Andrew’s list of New Year’s resolutions for 2022.
And if he goes through the embarrassment and expense of the case and then loses (and it hardly seems likely Andrew will find much sympathy among a group of New York jurors) he still has the problem of finding the money to settle the judgement.
This leaves the intriguing third option
in which Andrew sticks two fingers up to the New York courts and simply stops taking any further calls from Judge Lewis Kaplan or his representatives.
No-one in Andrew’s camp is ready to talk, for now, about this nuclear option of withdrawing co-operation and refusing to participate in the case any further. This would result in a so-called “default judgement” against him.
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