Whatever the outcome, there is no way back for the prince – and the family will be keen to limit the damage
Well, he’s surely sweating now. One by one, the options are running out for Prince Andrew. He has just lost his latest legal battle after Manhattan federal court judge Lewis Kaplan’s ruling today that the sexual abuse lawsuit against him should proceed to trial, despite his lawyers advancing a variety of technical arguments, including that Virginia Giuffre no longer lives in the US, that she agreed in a 2009 deal not to pursue claims against certain other people, and that the court summons had not been properly served. He now faces a long trial that is likely to cause considerable reputational damage to the royal family in a year when everyone was supposed to be celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee.
One possibility left to him is settling with Giuffre out of court. After all, this is what happens in the vast majority of civil litigations in the US, particularly after the attrition of a drawn-out court case begins to bite. But such an option could hit the cash-strapped prince hard in the pocket, given reports that he is trying to sell his £17m Swiss chalet to raise funds just to pay for his legal bills; this is after reports from the palace that the Queen would not bail him out financially. Since Giuffre had already received $500,000 in a legal settlement with Epstein, any settlement could run into the millions of dollars (some reports have put it as high as $5m). If that happened, despite palace denials, the Queen would probably have to intercede with help, just as she did when Charles was faced with a multimillion-pound divorce bill from Diana in 1995.
David McClure is the author of The Queen’s True Worth
