Gwyneth Paltrow prevailed Thursday in the trial brought against her by an ailing doctor who claimed the famed actress crashed into him on a ski slope in 2016 and left him with permanent damage.
After deliberating for 2 hours and 32 minutes, the jury of eight in Utah’s Third District Court ultimately sided with the Goop founder, who maintained that Dr. Terry Sanderson, 76, caused the crash. Paltrow said she couldn’t possibly be liable for his mental and physical deterioration — much of which her lawyers argued occurred before the accident.
Sanderson had sued Paltrow in 2019 seeking $3.1 million in damages, but a judge determined he was only eligible for $300,000 if he had won his case.
Paltrow countersued for a mere $1 plus her legal fees. On Thursday, the jury awarded her the dollar, saying they deemed the accident was 100% Sanderson’s fault.
Payment of the legal fees — likely amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars — will be decided at a later date, a representative for Paltrow said.
Paltrow remained straight-faced as Judge Kent Holmberg summed up the verdict, but at times appeared to be stifling a smile.
As she left the court following the verdict, she bent over and quickly and whispered “I wish you well” to Sanderson, who nodded. He then stood and left court himself.
Following the verdict, Paltrow released a statement saying: “I felt that acquiescing to a false claim compromised my integrity.
“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.”
In a statement to the press after the verdict, Sanderson claimed the trial “wasn’t just about the facts of the accident” and said too much of the decision rested on how Paltrow’s legal team characterized him.
“I’m not that crazy person,” he said. “I wish I could have that back. I didn’t realize that when you go down this road, I thought it’d be about a ski accident that I knew I had the truth. The absolute facts. And it wasn’t about that.
“It turns out it was about the narrative of the life I’ve lived. Things said that absolutely are not true.”
At its core, the trial was ultimately a “he-said, she-said” case, as the plaintiff and the defendant had vastly different versions of what precipitated the Feb. 26, 2016, crash and what happened in its immediate aftermath.
“I was hit by Mr. Sanderson, and he was at fault,” Paltrow told the court on March 24 almost immediately upon taking the stand.
Sanderson’s lawyers grilled her about everything from her height to her relationship with Taylor Swift to whether she fled the scene in a “hit-and-run” as the plaintiff claimed.
Paltrow explained she stayed on the scene until her son’s ski instructor Eric Christiansen said she could ski down to reunite with her daughter and promised to give Sanderson her information.
The “Shakespeare in Love” star testified she thought someone might be trying to sexually assault her when she was first hit by Sanderson.
“I was skiing and two skis came between my skis, forcing my legs apart, and then there was a body pressing against me,” she told the court. “And there was a very strange grunting noise. So my brain was trying to make sense of what was happening.
“I thought, ‘Is this a practical joke? Is someone, like, doing something perverted? This is really, really strange.’ My mind was going very, very quickly, and I was trying to ascertain what was happening,” she continued.
Parts of Paltrow’s testimony went viral after she was asked by Sanderson’s lawyers how the crash affected her,
“Well, I lost half a day of skiing,” she deadpanned.
Paltrow’s children, Apple Martin, 18, and Moses Martin, 16, were both expected to testify, but her defense ultimately read parts of their depositions to the court due to scheduling conflicts.
Two of Sanderson’s daughters gave tearful testimony about how their father was forever changed by the crash. One daughter even said her child no longer likes to be around her grandfather, who became angry and insecure after the ski accident.
Sanderson too broke down on the stand, talking about how his life has been derailed since the accident at Deer Valley Resort in Park City.
He told jurors that “there was nothing in front of me” on the slopes right before the crash. “I just remember everything was great, and then I heard something I’ve never heard at a ski resort,” he said.
“It was like somebody was out of control and hit a tree and was going to die, and that’s what I heard until I was hit.”
Paltrow told the juror she has sympathy for Sanderson’s plight but rejects culpability: “I feel very sorry for him. It seems like he’s had a very difficult life, but I did not cause the accident, so I cannot be at fault for anything that subsequently happened to him.”
Her defense zeroed in on an email Sanderson sent his daughters mere hours after the crash with the subject line “I’m famous.” Paltrow’s lawyers used that email to claim Sanderson sued Paltrow three years after the crash seeking his 15 minutes of fame.
Sanderson attempted to counter that in his testimony, saying, “I’m not into celebrity worship,” and telling the court he didn’t care about crashing into someone famous. He claimed he wrote that subject line to inject some “levity” into a serious accident.
Paltrow’s lawyers pushed back, citing his deposition three years ago, when he responded “yes” when asked if he thought it was “cool” that Paltrow was the other party in the accident.
The trial lasted eight days and was watched by hundreds of thousands in livestream, with clips garnering even more views on social media.
Paltrow sat through each day of the proceedings, while Sanderson was only present for a few days.
