"Flirting with Blackmail"

A quick curtain was rung down in London last week on the opera bouffe lawsuit of Her Serene Highness Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfurst v. Viscount Rothermere (TIME, Nov. 20).

To the Princess' claim that he promised to pay her $20,000 a year for the rest of her life, Lord Rothermere, who controls the London Daily Mail, boomed "Preposterous!" He admitted paying her $250,000 in six years to handle his relations with Adolf Hitler and other European bigwigs, naively explaining: "I expected her to live like a queen." But when asked if she was his ambassador, prognathous Rothermere replied with heavy humor: "I am not a sovereign state--yet."

As the case drew to a close, Sir William Jowitt, ace lawyer for Lord Rothermere, summed up by observing that not only was the Princess' story that she had been promised $20,000 yearly for life untrue, "but if it were true it could only be true on the basis that this lady was flirting with blackmail."

After deliberating, Hon. Mr. Justice Tucker declared himself "satisfied" that the Viscount never "contractually" promised to support the Princess, disparaged much of her evidence as "nebulous and unreliable." The Court then dismissed the case against Lord Rothermere, ordered Princess Stephanie to pay costs, which in a British case of this kind, with top-price lawyers, might run to some $35,000.

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