KEY POINTS:
Everyone, says the legal axiom, deserves their day in court. Mohamed al-Fayed, whose son died with Princess Diana in a Paris car smash, had more than his day. The inquest into their deaths started on October 2 and for nearly six months a judge and jury in London's Royal Courts of Justice have listened to a tale of absurdity.
The nonsense ended this week when the judge relieved the jury of the need to consider Fayed's theory on the cause of the couple's death because, the judge ruled, it had heard not a scrap of evidence to support it. The jury retired to weigh up whether the cause was a blameless car accident or whether actions of the driver or the pursuing photographers contributed to it.
This is a task that might have taken a fraction of the time had the system not felt obliged to hear the suspicions of a man wealthy enough to press his case for the 10 years that had passed since the loss of his son.
Fayed believed, and no doubt still believes, the crash was master-minded by the Duke of Edinburgh assisted by Prince Charles with the knowledge of Tony Blair, and carried out jointly by British and French intelligence services with communications support from the CIA.
Conspiracy theories have wide appeal. The world seems evenly divided between those people who believe the obvious explanation is probably the right one and those predisposed to suspect things are seldom as straightforward as they appear.
But the ordinary sane conspiracy theorist can leave some things to chance. Fayed could not. Because Diana was delivered to hospital too late to save her, he decided the French ambulance service must also have been in on the plot. And the British ambassador who ordered the Princess's body embalmed must have done so to hide her pregnancy. Fayed fervently believes he lost a grandchild.
The normal conspiracy theorist does not then extend the plot to practically everyone who disbelieves him. This one implicated the judge in a French inquiry and two Scotland Yard commissioners as well as Diana's sister and her lawyer.
At that point, the law should know it is dealing with more than a normal conspiratorial outlook, it is hearing paranoia. That is a condition that needs treatment, not courtroom indulgence. Nothing short of the verdict sought will satisfy the sufferer he has had a fair hearing. A trial for that purpose is a waste of time and money.
This one has cost the British taxpayers at least $5 million.
If it puts paid to an industry of conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, it could be worth it, but that hope is probably forlorn. Rigorous inquiries into the death of John F. Kennedy have not convinced everyone his assassin acted alone.
And the Fayed theory was by no means the only wild one Diana's inquest heard. They ranged from the faked death - Diana and Dodi living now in blissful anonymity - to the faked death that went wrong, to the business hit on Dodi with Diana collateral damage.
It seems less than befitting her impact on the world that the cause of her death should be as banal as it probably was. She was with men who wanted to impress her. They had been drinking; the paparazzi on motorcycles set off in pursuit of their car. The crazy entourage disappeared into an underpass and the car hit a pillar at speed.
The jury could return verdicts only of accidental death or gross negligence. The evidence offered nothing more sinister.
But tell that to the conspiracists. They will have already filed the inquest under cover-ups. Their plots only thicken.
