Gwyneth Paltrow’s courtroom drama captivates the world
The Oscar-winning actress and wellness guru’s case has touched on the burden of celebrity, the nature of ageing, ski etiquette – even Taylor Swift.
She is the Oscar-winning actress, wellness guru and globally renowned businesswoman worth an estimated $US200 million.
He is the retired optometrist who accuses her of a violent “hit and run” collision on a ski slope that left him with four broken ribs, psychological distress and permanent brain damage.
As last week’s legal showdown demonstrated, Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, and Terry Sanderson, 76, do not agree on much. But one thing is beyond dispute: the staid courtroom of Park City, Utah, is a world away from the flawless runs, slopeside hot tubs and apres-ski champagne yurts of nearby Deer Valley.
It is one of the most spectacular and sought-after resorts in North America where, more than seven years ago, on February 26, 2016, the pair were skiing down a beginners’ “green” run at the same time and in the same place.
What happened next is the subject of a years-long and increasingly rancorous lawsuit in which Sanderson demanded more than $3.1 million in compensation – since downgraded by a judge to $US300,000 – for the physical damage allegedly caused to him by her negligent behaviour on the ski slope.
Sanderson, who is a divorced father of three daughters, says he can no longer maintain relationships or enjoy life, and has gone from being outgoing to agitated and anxious.
Paltrow, the Shakespeare in Love star and founder of the wellness firm Goop, has launched her own counterclaim for just dollars 1 - plus legal fees. Testifying in the dock for more than two hours last week, she accused Sanderson of being the one who crashed into her and said he was lying in a cynical attempt to exploit her fame and riches. He is expected to testify for the first time on Monday.
The televised trial, which has been watched by millions and is expected to last eight days in total, has touched on so much: the power and burden of celebrity, the nature of ageing, the rules of mountain etiquette – even Paltrow’s friendship with the singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
But it is ultimately about something simple: what did, or did not happen, on a ski slope more than half a decade ago?
‘YOU SKIED RIGHT INTO MY EFFING BACK’
Paltrow and Sanderson both accept that they had an entanglement of sorts on the slope. The central question being examined in court is who caused it.
On the afternoon in question, Paltrow was on a holiday with her then boyfriend – TV producer Brad Falchuk, 52, to whom she is now married – his two children and her offspring with her ex-husband, the Coldplay singer Chris Martin: their daughter Apple, then 11, and their son Moses, then 9. The aim of the holiday was to see whether their families could “blend” as they made new lives together.
In the early afternoon, Paltrow claimed, she and her group were heading down to a restaurant for lunch when she felt someone skiing into her back. At first, she alleged, she feared the person behind might have been sexually assaulting her.
She told the court last week: “Two skis came between my skis, forcing my legs apart, and there was a body pressing against me. And there was a very strange groaning noise.”
The actress said: “Is this a practical joke? Is someone doing something perverted?”
She continued: “It was probably a few ... seconds and then we fell to the right. Somebody must have caught an edge. I fell on his body.”
The pair tumbled to the ground together and were almost “spooning” as they crashed, she said.
After recovering from the collision, Paltrow screamed: “You skied directly into my effing back!” – language for which she apologised in court last week and which, at the time, she feared her young son might hear.
She said that Sanderson, still on the ground, responded by “mumbling” apologetically: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
‘MAMA! MAMA! WATCH ME!’
Sanderson has provided a diametrically different story. He says it was Paltrow who ploughed into him and is even said to have compared her to the prehistoric reptilian monster Godzilla.
His lawyers argue that the actress was skiing recklessly at the time as she was distracted by Moses, who was further up the slope from her. According to the deposition of one person present, her son, who was skiing with his own instructor, Eric Christiansen, had been pleading for her attention, exclaiming: “Mama! Mama! Watch me!”
It is suggested that Paltrow then turned around to look at him, causing her to lose focus.
THE COLOURBLIND WITNESS
Paltrow crashed into him from behind, leaving him unconscious face down in the snow, according to the testimony of Craig Ramon, 48, a member of Sanderson’s skiing group, the sole eyewitness to the crash. He is being treated by the prosecution as their star witness.
He told the court: “She slammed him. Very hard. She hit him directly in the back. The tips of his skis go out and he goes face down, spreadeagled, with Gwyneth on top of him.”
Richard Boehme, a biomedical engineer called to give evidence, told the court via video-link that Sanderson’s injuries are consistent with this account, and indicate he was “hit from the rear, on the left side” by Paltrow.
She acknowledges part of the prosecution’s argument, which is that she was looking at her son, but told the court: “I can still watch my children ski and be skied directly into my back by someone. Which is what happened.”
She has also rubbished Ramon’s testimony, pointing out that he was 40ft away at the time - making it impossible to discern “who is who” given that both parties were wearing helmets.
Just as pertinently, she added, the witness is colourblind, a disorder which can inhibit a person’s ability to see or differentiate between colours and in some extreme cases limits their ability to see colour at all.
The functionality of Ramon’s eyesight could not be more material to the trial.
The resort’s safety policy states that those “downhill of you have the right of way. You must avoid them.” In other words, in order to prove Paltrow behaved negligently, it is likely Sanderson will have to demonstrate she was flouting that policy by being further up, rather than the other way round.
Yet Paltrow said of Ramon: “I don’t believe he saw what he thinks he saw. I don’t know how he can be positive with what he saw, especially with how much he changed his story.”
She said there was no way he could have distinguished between her and the diminutive Sanderson. Both were wearing helmets, so, her lawyers argue, he would have had to form a distinction based on the colour of their clothing - something he would have been unable to do given his optical condition.
“A DIRTY LOOK”
Then there is the question of what happened next.
Paltrow accepts responding angrily to Sanderson as he lay on the ground and repeatedly saying “what the f***?”, but has said her actions might have been influenced by “adrenaline” and “emotion”. She said: “I felt violated. I was upset.” She was also distressed by the impact of the collision on her knee.
According to her lawyer, she decided to ski to the bottom of the slope before wrapping up her activities for the day, telling her daughter, Apple, that “some A-hole” had crashed into her.
She does not remember asking Sanderson if he was okay, but insists she thought he had only “minor” injuries and so left him in the hands of Christiansen, the instructor. She had paid dollars 8,980 for skiing lessons during the trip, according to a receipt disclosed to the court.
Her lawyers have disclosed a text sent on the day of the crash in which she told her family: “I came in. That guy sort of hurt me. I’m going to get a massage at 3.” They accept she did not go to a doctor but was left “rattled” and “hurt”.
The septuagenarian puts a far less flattering spin on events. His lawyers argue that Paltrow flouted etiquette for ski collisions by failing to exchange details with him and then sped off. They also say that Christiansen “yanked” him to his feet before skiing away.
Ramon has provided a statement corroborating this account, saying he saw Paltrow “bolt” down the slope “without saying a word” and was later passed by Falchuk who, he says, shot him a “dirty look”.
He realised who Paltrow was - and wrongly assumed Falchuk was Chris Martin - after Christiansen skied up to him and said: “Your buddy just took out Gwyneth Paltrow!”
Ramon was challenged on his account by Paltrow’s lawyers, who also suggested he was far more than a mere “acquaintance” of Sanderson’s. In a bizarre twist, they asked him to explain why the pair had gone shooting on an elk farm together if they were not friends.
After the crash, a park employee named Whitney took Sanderson to the bottom of the slope on a toboggan. Soon after he texted one of his daughters, saying: “Whitney had me entertained while probing me with questions to evaluate my senses.”
He added: “She also took me down to the toboggan by herself . . . a sweetheart.”
That day he returned home, where, his ex-girlfriend Karlene Davidson said: “He looked like a truck had hit him. He was dishevelled, he didn’t look well. Ashen-grey. He looked like he was injured. He was cranky, ornery - he just wanted to go to bed.”
It was almost three years before Sanderson, who says his life was indelibly affected by what happened, brought the legal action against Paltrow in January 2019.
Last week, Davidson, 71, was among those who took to the stand to make this case, saying he had been “joyful” and full of life and energy in the year and a half before the accident but that his personality had suddenly changed. He started to push her away.
She reflected: “Looking back, I think there was more going on than I realised. I don’t think he thought he was where he was before the accident. He became like an old man - he didn’t want to do the things he did before the accident. The joy was gone. He would become agitated easily - little things would get him.”
His daughter, Polly Sanderson-Grasham, 49, has made a similar argument, saying he had gone from being a “go-er” and a “real-positive influence” to being a wreck. She cited his appearance at his granddaughter’s graduation weeks after the incident. “I felt like ‘wow’. There was a moment when I almost expected drool to come out of his mouth,” she said.
Intermittently weeping and dabbing her eye with a tissue as she testified, she said: “He wasn’t engaged with anyone. That was my first slap in the face that something is terribly wrong.”
Medical experts that Sanderson subsequently consulted have weighed in too: one, Dr Alina Fong, a neuropsychologist, said he visited her in 2017 and presented a “myriad” of symptoms suggesting he had suffered a concussion.
She dismissed the idea he had at any point faked his injuries, saying he was an “ideal patient” whose life had abruptly changed “physically, emotionally, biologically”.
WHERE IS THE GOPRO?
Paltrow’s lawyers blame Sanderson’s physical or mental deterioration on the natural process of ageing. They have also sought to poke holes in his testimony, placing plenty of stock on an email exchange he had with his three daughters soon after the crash.
He began the correspondence with an email with the subject line: “I’m famous . . . At what cost?” His daughter responded: “I also can’t believe this is all on GoPro” - a reference to the mounted cameras used by athletes to record action sports.
Such a device has never been found in Sanderson’s possession. On Friday, another of his daughters, Shae Sanderson, said she did not actually know if the footage existed. Paltrow’s lawyers have seized on this detail.
They also argued that the retired eye doctor’s initial wording – “I’m famous” – suggests he thought it was “cool” to have had a collision with a celebrity and was thrilled by the crash.
DID SHE COPY TAYLOR SWIFT?
Last week, Kristin VanOrman, his attorney, suggested that Paltrow got the idea of symbolically countersuing Sanderson in order to mirror the pop star Taylor Swift.
In 2013, Swift, now 33, was sued by David Mueller, a DJ who argued he had unfairly lost his job at a radio station because she had falsely accused him of sexual assault during a pre-concert meet and greet. Swift responded to Mueller’s defamation lawsuit by countersuing him, arguing he had attacked her and demanding damages of dollars 1.
After jurors concluded the two-year case by ruling in her favour, a number of fans at Swift’s concerts waved around dollar bills in homage to the nominal but symbolic damages she received.
Asked if she knew about the case, Paltrow said: “I had not been familiar with it, but I now am.”
Paltrow was then asked if she and Swift, 33, had ever exchanged intimate gifts - an apparent reference to a 2021 advert for her lifestyle brand, Goop, which saw her place a vibrator in a bag addressed to the pop star. The actress was forced to explain they were not “good friends ... we are friendly. I’ve taken our kids to one of her concerts before, but we don’t talk very often.”
The proceedings, which have electrified audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, will resume on Monday, with Sanderson expected to testify. More than seven years after the incident, Paltrow will also call experts, ski instructors and her two children, Moses and Apple.
Their argument, like hers, is best summed up by her solicitor, who last week pithily conveyed the essence of her case in response to Sanderson’s claims: the story, he said, was “Utter BS”.
The Sunday Times
