NBC analyst says it's not an 'effective' strategy for Prince Andrew to 'hide at his mother's castle' amid sexual assault suit

A hearing in the sexual assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew is set to take place on Monday, but it sounds like his lawyers may be sitting it out.

Andrew's legal team is "signaling that they will not take part" in a Monday hearing about the lawsuit brought against him by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Page Six reports. According to the Times of London, his lawyers won't attend the hearing in New York, as they continue to claim he was not properly served like Giuffre's team says he was.

Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein's, brought a civil case against Andrew earlier this year. She has alleged Epstein forced her to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. Andrew has denied the allegations. According to The Daily Beast, Andrew has "fled to the safety of his mother's Balmoral estate in Scotland," seemingly to avoid being served in the lawsuit.

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But Tali Farhadian Weinstein, an NBC News legal analyst and former prosecutor, told Today on Monday, "I don't think that it's going to be an effective legal strategy for him to hide at his mother's castle for too much longer and say, 'You can't catch me.' So we're going to get past this." She added that Andrew "is going to be served, and the case is going to start," explaining that if he continues to "stonewall," then a "default judgment will be entered against him."

Andrew's lawyers, per the Times, say that they "reiterate that our client reserves all his rights, including to contest the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts (including on the basis of potentially defective service)."