It’s Law and Order meets Real Housewives meets Succession, and it’s all playing out via our social media feeds. The Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial is one of the strangest and most oddly entertaining things happening in the news right now.
If you haven’t been keeping up – or are just now learning all the TikToks and Instagram Reels you’ve scrolled past are not in fact clips from a new Ryan Murphy Netflix series – the trial all revolves around an incident that happened in Utah in 2016.
Terry Sanderson (right) is suing Gwyneth Paltrow for an alleged hit-and-run on the ski slopes in 2016.Credit:AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool
The Academy Award-winning actress and vagina egg merchant is being sued for $US300,000 by a 76-year-old retired eye doctor, Terry Sanderson, who says he has suffered life-altering injuries after a celebrity “hit-and-run” on the ski slopes. Paltrow denies the charge, instead alleging it was Sanderson who ran into her, and is countersuing for $1 plus legal costs.
She sustained no serious injuries at the time but is arguably now suffering in a different, more humiliating way. Paltrow has been mercilessly roasted every day for the past week for her starring role in the most absurd satire of the rich since The White Lotus.
Let’s take a look at some of the most bizarre (and widely memed) moments so far.
‘Well, I lost half a day of skiing’
The appealing thing about this trial is that the stakes are so much lower than what we’ve seen in other recent celebrity court encounters. No one is being charged with historic counts of sexual assault. There are no gory allegations of domestic violence being turned, inexplicably, into memes.
Instead, in her own words while on the stand, the pain and suffering the actor endured because of this alleged incident amounts to “[losing] half a day of skiing”.
Though some defend the statement by pointing out Paltrow is not claiming to have suffered great damages, others – including fellow actress Busy Phillips – have embraced it as the ultimate ironic expression of faux hardship.
It’s the perfect shorthand for when a waiter forgets to place exactly two ice cubes in your chardonnay or your GP says, actually, you should probably stop living off bone broth and running your own IVs.
The tragedy of no longer enjoying a wine tasting
Things are significantly more serious for Sanderson, however, who says the collision left him with four broken ribs and a concussion which led to ongoing neurological issues. (The defence contest the latter claim, suggesting any issues are caused by pre-existing conditions and advanced age).
But he has also not garnered much support due to the way his issues have been discussed in court.
Arguing his case, a lawyer suggested this “charming, outgoing, gregarious person” was, after the crash, “no longer charming” – a statement that, one writer joked, “sounds like this man is no longer capable of calling waiters by their first names”.
He also copped a lot of mockery after one expert testified he could no longer do many of the activities he previously enjoyed including “wine tasting, skiing and volunteering”.
The nicest cross-examination in history
Sanderson’s attorney Kristin VanOrman has also stolen the spotlight for her bizarre and sometimes downright sweet questioning of Paltrow. With a big loving grin, VanOrman has joked about how nice Paltrow’s ski outfit must be, praised her height – “I am so jealous!” – and how she must be a good tipper.
Weirdly, there were no questions about her star sign, how she gets her hair so glossy, or how she manages to stay #humble when she’s so beautiful and talented and smart.
Going on the record about Taylor Swift
The lawyer did, however, make time to interrogate Paltrow on her friendship with pop star Taylor Swift.
VanOrman suggested the actor got the idea to countersue her client for $1 in “symbolic damages” from Swift, who had done the same in a 2017 case (which, for the record, was not at all related to ski accidents). Paltrow said she had not heard of the singer’s case when lodging her own countersuit, which then led to an awkward, ruthless and strangely compelling exchange that could be plucked word-for-word from Mean Girls.
VanOrman: “Are you good friends with Taylor Swift?”
Paltrow: “No…”
VanOrman: “You’re not good friends with Taylor Swift?”
Paltrow: “I would not say we’re good friends. We are friendly … we don’t talk very often.”
The fashion
It also doesn’t help that the first image we all saw from within the courtroom was of Paltrow in a thick turtleneck sweater and Jeffrey Dahmer glasses looking like, as one comedian put it, “she’s on trial in 1987 for hiring a hitman to kill her husband”.
The outfit and her general demeanour – cooly sipping green juice and clinking giant gold jewellery like someone’s mean stepmum in a John Hughes movie – didn’t win her much sympathy in the media or online.
But since then, things have turned and many are now backing her commitment to coating herself in cashmere and disdain. It’s even been praised by some as a deliberate strategy, telegraphing “demure propriety and power glam” to infer 1) she’s barely big enough to lift the weight of her chunky knit sweater, let alone pulverise a grown man on a mountain slope and 2) this whole thing is a waste of her time.
The case continues this week with final summations expected on Friday (AEDT). I will be wearing my finest black turtleneck and woollen power suit to mourn this loss.
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