Actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow took the stand Friday afternoon for a civil lawsuit regarding a 2016 skiing incident. Paltrow, 50, has been accused of causing serious injury to retired optometrist Terry Sanderson after she allegedly collided with him while skiing at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah. Sanderson, 76, alleged Paltrow skied into him, “knocking him down hard, knocking him out.” He claimed the collision caused “permanent traumatic brain injury, 4 broken ribs, pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life.” He maintains that Paltrow left him collapsed on the slope and skied away. He is suing Paltrow for more than US$300,000. The pair skied down the hill for a short period, before “someone’s ski caught an edge,” Paltrow testifed, and they collapsed, with Paltrow landing on top of Sanderson, their skis entwined. “He struck me in the back, yes, that’s exactly what happened,” Paltrow said, as the lawyer read back a portion of her description of the events from a deposition. Paltrow said she waited for Sanderson to stand up – “long enough for him to say that he was OK” – before she skied away, adding that she did not ask about his condition any further and did not know the extent of his injuries at the time.
On Friday afternoon, she told a lawyer from Sanderson’s team that she “was not engaging in any risky behaviour” on the day of the crash, saying she was skiing with her two kids as well as with Brad Falchuk – her boyfriend at the time, now her husband – and his two kids. The group was taking ski lessons on a green run – considered to be the easiest of runs on a ski hill – at the time, when she said she felt a pair of skis come between her skis, spreading her legs apart, and felt a “large body” hit her from behind. “There was a body pressing against me and there was a very strange grunting noise,” she testified of the moment of the collision. “My brain was trying to make sense of what was happening. I thought, ‘Am I… is this a practical joke? Is someone, like, doing something perverted?’ This is really really strange,” she said in her testimony, adding that she “froze” while trying to make sense of what was happening.
