Gwyneth Paltrow won her 2023 Utah ski-crash trial in under three hours of jury deliberation — and was awarded the symbolic $1 she had countersued for — turning a retired optometrist's $300,000 lawsuit into one of the most memed courtroom spectacles of the decade.
The case dated to February 26, 2016, at the Deer Valley Resort in Park City, Utah. Terry Sanderson, then 69, claimed Paltrow skied into him from behind on a beginner slope, knocking him out and leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, four broken ribs, and lasting damage to his enjoyment of life. He sued in 2019, initially seeking $3.1 million before his claims were pared to $300,000. Paltrow countersued for a symbolic $1 plus attorney's fees, insisting Sanderson — the uphill skier, who under ski code bore the duty to avoid those below — had crashed into her.
The eight-day trial in March 2023 was livestreamed and relentlessly memed: Paltrow's courtroom fashion, her deadpan testimony ('I was skiing and two skis came between my skis... my knee — and then there was a body pressing against me'), and the dueling expert witnesses, including biomechanical engineer Irving Scher, whose animations argued the physics proved Sanderson struck Paltrow from behind. Sanderson's team countered that the Oscar winner had been skiing 'out of control' and fled without getting help.
On March 30, 2023, the jury needed just over two and a half hours to find Sanderson 100% at fault and award Paltrow her $1. As she left the courtroom, Paltrow stopped at Sanderson's table, touched his shoulder, and whispered, 'I wish you well' — a gesture he later called 'very kind of her.' Her statement read: 'I felt that acquiescing to a false claim compromised my integrity.' Sanderson was less gracious about the experience, calling the trial 'character assassination' and lamenting that Paltrow's fame gave her 'assumed credibility' — 'Who wants to take on a celebrity?' Asked whether the lawsuit had been worth it, given the public airing of his medical history and personal life, he answered: 'Absolutely not.'
The trial's afterlife continued: in 2025, Sanderson gave extensive interviews for 'Gwyneth: The Biography' by Amy Odell, insisting there had been no effort to settle out of court. For Paltrow, the verdict was vindication for her Goop-era brand of unflappable wellness celebrity; for everyone else, it was proof that in the age of livestreamed justice, even a ski collision can become must-see TV.