Gwyneth Paltrow Ski Collision Trial Begins as Actor Sued Over ...
Gwyneth Paltrow's long-running dispute over a ski collision is heading to court on Tuesday, several years after she was accused of colliding with another person heading down the slopes in Park City, Utah.
In a lawsuit filed in 2019, retired optometrist Terry Sanderson accused Paltrow of injuring him in a "hit-and-run" ski crash back in 2016. He further alleged that the collision knocked him out and left him with four broken ribs and a brain injury.
Sanderson told reporters at the time he'd filed the $3.1 million lawsuit against Paltrow that the Oscar winner and lifestyle guru was "distracted" and moving "out of control" in the moments before the crash.
However, Paltrow, 50, has disputed the version of events presented by Sanderson, 76, stating that he was the one who crashed into her. The Utah trial will set out to decide who was responsible for the collision seven years ago.
The $3.1 million lawsuit has since been reduced to a $300,000 claim against Paltrow, who is countersuing a single dollar in damages, plus legal fees.
Sanderson has claimed that on February 26, 2016, he heard "hysterical screaming like ... King Kong in the jungle or something," before he was slammed to the floor by Paltrow on Deer Valley Resort's green "Bandana" run. He believes he then lay unconscious in the snow for between five and ten minutes.
"I remember feeling sore, my ribs were really sore. And my brain felt like it had been injected with Novocaine, I don't know how else to describe it. It was just numb. Nothing was making sense," he said at a 2019 news conference, per The Desert News.
The lawsuit alleges Paltrow skied away and that an instructor scolded Sanderson, blaming him for the collision. Deer Valley Resort, the suit claimed at the time, failed to take "proper action," filing a false report that said the retired doctor was at fault.
"Gwyneth Paltrow knew it was wrong to ski out of control too fast for her ability...but she did it anyway," the lawsuit states, per The Deseret News.
Paltrow has countered that her instructor, who was named in the lawsuit as Eric Christiansen, did witness the collision. The screen star further claimed that she was the one who was lower down on the mountain, not Sanderson.
The rules on Utah's slopes are that people in front of their fellow skiers have the right of way. Those coming down the slopes should avoid others in front of them.
Christiansen and the Deer Valley Resort Company were initially named in the petition. They were later removed when a judge ruled that the dispute should be restricted to the collision itself between Paltrow and Sanderson. The hit-and-run issue was also struck from the dispute by Utah Third District Judge Kent Holmberg.
"No one with knowledge of Ms. Paltrow's post-collision actions claims to have observed Paltrow acting recklessly," stated the 2022 order. "Even when interpreted in the light most favorable to [Sanderson], the undisputed facts fail to support his claim that Paltrow's post-collision actions were likely to result in substantial harm, that they were highly unreasonable or an extreme departure from ordinary care, or that they came with an apparent and high degree of danger."
As a result of the ruling, the claim against Paltrow is now one of negligence. Whatever is alleged to have taken place following the crash is now out of bounds for the court proceedings, per local NBC affiliate KSL-TV.
A spokesperson for Paltrow said in a statement shared with various outlets in 2019 that the lawsuit was meritless, and that their client would be "vindicated." At the time, a Deer Valley spokesperson declined to comment on the incident, telling Newsweek they could not discuss pending legal matters relating to the resort or its guests.
