Prince Pierre Casiraghi (Getty Images)
The Manhattan courthouse Battle Royale between Monaco’s Prince Pierre Casiraghi and princely jaw-puncher Adam Hock reached a truce this morning, with Hock taking a plea to disorderly conduct for a year-old Meatpacking District bar brawl.
This morning’s plea — under which Hock must serve 12 weeks anger management and 10 days community service — puts the kibosh on what would have been a criminal trial with a witness list that included the baby-faced prince, his posse of wealthy young pals and a bevy of attendant supermodels, all present that night at the Double Seven nightclub.
Hock — the chisel-chinned former owner of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square — has insisted that he only swung his fist in self defense. Today’s plea will leave him with no criminal record, and is the result of prosecutors agreeing to back off its original charges of misdemeanor assault.
“As the officer said who arrested me, under New York City rules, the winner goes to jail and the loser goes to the hospital,” said Hock, who had been charged with misdemeanor assault for socking not only Casiraghi that night, but three others in his royal partying posse.
They are: Diego Marroquin, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, and Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, who is the ex of Paris Hilton.
“No hard feelings,” Hock told reporters after court. “Going forward in life. Life’s too good,” he said.
Hock has spent the past two years working as co-founder of the Independent Libya Foundation, he said.
“I’ve been working with a philanthropic foundation for the past two years,” he said.
The foundation requires Hock to travel internationally and frequently, said his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina. Being locked into a two-, possibly three-week trial would have been unworkable, Tacopino said.
Hock was also happy to take a plea that, unlike with prosecutors’ earlier plea offers, involved no criminal record and no admissions to harassment or assault.
“He will acknowledge being disorderly,” the lawyer explained. “They were all being disorderly.”
Casiraghi would have had to answer “some very tough questions under sworn oath,” Tacopino said of the averted trial.
“I would have asked him about his prior conduct,” said the lawyer, who has called the four complainants a pack of “international bar brawlers.”
“And I would have asked him about the progressions of his injury from a superficial wound to something where he had to be out of work for 30 days.”
Weeks after the brawl, Casiraghi, the 25-year-old grandson of Grace Kelly, had given prosecutors a one-page report from his royal physicians claiming that his chin had been so grievously attacked, he needed to go on disability for a month.
His bar brawl days are now firmly behind him, Hock told reporters.
“I’d never had any trouble going out before, prior to this,” he said. “I think I’ll be much more prudent regarding where I go and who I associate with.”
As for the mandatory anger management classes, which Tacopino said his client can “knock out in a week,” Hock was philosophical.
“My closest friends and my wife say I’m the least angry man on the planet,” he said. “But I’ll keep an open mind” at class, he said.