Gwyneth Paltrow may have lost half a day of skiing — and spent seven years fighting litigation — but she has won her contentious ski slope collision trial.
After eight days of testimony in Park City, the Oscar-winning actress and wellness mogul was found not liable in retired optometrist Dr. Terry Sanderson’s lawsuit claiming that she slammed into him at Deer Valley Resort in 2016 and caused his ongoing health issues. Paltrow countersued for a symbolic $1. The resulting courtroom battle turned what is typically an extremely common and minor ski run occurrence into an exhaustive — and occasionally rather silly — live-streamed spectacle, with a flurry of medical experts, ski resort staff, witnesses and Paltrow herself taking the stand. Paltrow reacted soberly to the verdict being read, just nodding slightly. Sanderson hung his head.
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“I felt that acquiescing to a false claim compromised my integrity,” Paltrow said in a statement. “I am pleased with the outcome and I appreciate all of the hard work of Judge Holmberg and the jury, and thank them for their thoughtfulness in handling this case.”
During closing arguments, Paltrow’s attorney declared his client has been “pounded like a punching bag” throughout the trial. “[Sanderson] hit her, he hurt her, and he’s not entitled to be rewarded for hurting her,” Stephen Owens said.
During testimony, it emerged that Paltrow, 50, was a moderately experienced skier who was with her children and ski instructor on a beginner run, and was keeping to the side of the slope as appropriate for slower skiers. Sanderson, 76, was an experienced black diamond skier who lacks vision in his right eye. The two collided on the slope, with each presenting testimony claiming the other was the uphill — and therefore at fault — skier.
“[Sanderson’s] own daughter said he would be dishonest for notoriety or money,” Owens said Thursday. “He’s blind in his right eye. He says he uses the term [blind] ‘loosely’ — he’s an optometrist, for heaven’s sake!… This a meritless claim. You don’t throw a $3 million bombshell in the courtroom, call [Paltrow] ‘King Kong’ and walk away. You shouldn’t reward that. And Gwyneth — who could have just paid the ransom — [told me,] ‘No, I’m not going to have someone hurt me and then ask for a lot of money.’ I said, ‘You’re going to have to sit here for two weeks in Park City and you can’t even look at your phone.’ She said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ We asked you for a dollar. Not because she had to [stop skiing] early and get a massage, but because it screwed up a very carefully planned, important time in her life [with then-boyfriend Brad Falchuk and both their kids]. Thank heavens the family melded together. But we want our dollar.”
Owens also claimed Sanderson was wearing a GoPro that might have vindicated his client if footage hadn’t vanished, and poked holes in Sanderson’s claim that the impact sent him flying through the air and left him unconscious for up to two minutes.
During his closing argument, Sanderson’s lawyer, Robert Sykes, surprised by declaring, “I believe Gwyneth Paltrow.… She says, ‘Terry hit me in the back.…’ I think she sincerely believes she got hit in the back.… She’s not a liar. But a sincere belief doesn’t make it so.” Yet Paltrow, he argued, was confused by the sudden impact and the jury should look at the evidence presented that supported his client. He also accused Deer Valley’s ski team in a “cover-up” of what really happened to protect their famous, wealthy client, and contended it’s ridiculous that a man with four broken ribs would have told the ski patrol that he felt OK, as claimed.
“Part of Terry will forever be on the Bandara run,” Sykes told the jury. “Bring Terry home.”
Sanderson’s other lawyer, Lawrence Buhler, suggested his client’s at times off-putting personality on the witness stand was also, in effect, Paltrow’s fault, and called his brain issues an “invisible” ailment. “When people get to know him, after a while, they don’t want to deal with him anymore,” Buhler said. “These are real injuries.… Your personality changes permanently.… You lose everybody who knows you. You lose everybody — your family, they’ll put up with you, and maybe the lawyers. But, really, they’re just putting up with you.” He suggested the jury award his client $3.2 million.
Paltrow’s lawyers countered that their evidence suggested Sanderson’s physical difficulties began before his accident and then progressed in a predictable way, and that evidence suggesting otherwise was from self-reported symptoms.
Any doubt about the verdict outcome seemed to go out the window late Wednesday as Paltrow’s attorney cycled through all of Sanderson’s social media travel posts in the wake of his accident, showing one slide after another of the retired doctor embarking on globe-trotting, physically active vacations, which seemed to undermine his claims the accident turned him into a “recluse” that left him with “permanent traumatic brain injury…suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.” With each slide, the attorney also questioned Sanderson about each vacation, seemingly demonstrating that Sanderson’s memory remained robust.
“He doesn’t tell his [doctors] he’s flying all over the world, that he’s biking, that he’s the poster boy for fitness at age 75!” Owens said. “He’s posting [online] every darned thing. This isn’t like me sending out a private investigator and trying to find pictures. All I have to do is [type] ‘Terry Sanderson,’ and my God — the man’s Mr. Activity.”
Viewers watching the live stream online seemed to overwhelming believe Paltrow, who was clear and concise on the witness stand — if seemingly rather bemused and weary. One bit of Paltrow’s testimony went viral when she said the collision cost her “half a day of skiing,” resulting in online trolling. In fairness, Paltrow was being asked to justify her $1 countersuit, and that half-day cost was far more than $1 (her resort bill alone was more than $9,000).
“I was hit by Mr. Sanderson and he was at fault,” Paltrow declared. “I feel very sorry for him. It seems like he’s had a difficult life. But I did not cause the accident so I cannot be at fault for anything that subsequentally happened to him.”
Viewers found Sanderson more evasive and meandering in his testimony, with the retiree frequently seeming to try to avoid giving direct answers, even when he was being asked questions by his own attorney.
When asked Wednesday by his attorney Kristin VanOrman if he regrets bringing his lawsuit, Sanderson replied on the stand, “That’s the purpose, I think, to make me regret bringing this lawsuit. It’s the pain of trying to sue a celebrity.” Pressed if was important to him to bring this lawsuit, Sanderson replied, “It was. I was seriously injured and I had so many insults added to that.… This is obviously an issue that somebody needs to be accountable for. If they’re not held accountable, they’re going to do it again.”
Sanderson then made a bizarre remark about somebody denying the “molesting of young children on an island” — seemingly comparing Paltrow’s denials of his ski crash claim to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Paltrow’s attorney slammed the comparison as “ridiculous” and Sanderson’s lawyer quickly concluded her questioning.
Paltrow’s family who accompanied her on the ski trip managed to stay off the witness stand, contrary to expectations going into the trial. Paltrow’s husband, writer-producer Falchuk, never took the stand due to “lack of time.” The deposed testimony of Paltrow’s daughter, Apple (18), and son, Moses (16), was read aloud to the jury rather than the two being physically present.
Sanderson originally sued Paltrow for $3.1 million in damages in 2019, but then later reduced the amount to $300,000. Paltrow asked the court for a symbolic $1 plus legal fees (leaving some to wonder why Paltrow, whose estimated worth is around $200 million, hadn’t simply settled). But experts have suggested that for both the plaintiff and the defendant, the associated costs of this multiyear legal battle far outweighs any of the potential payouts involved and it has seemingly become a matter of principle for both sides — as well as recouping their sunk-cost investment from battling each other.
