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On Friday, Gwyneth Paltrow took the stand in her ski accident trial, which is underway in Park City, Utah.
In the trial, a retired optometrist named Terry Sanderson is claiming Paltrow crashed into him on a beginner run at Deer Park Resort in Park City seven years ago. He’s suing the actress for $300,000.
Meanwhile, the Oscar winner is accusing him of running into her while she was taking ski lessons with her kids. She is countersuing for $1 and incurred legal fees.
On the witness stand, Paltrow insisted that she was not at fault in the accident.
She said, “Mr. Sanderson categorically directly hit me on that ski slope and that is the truth.”
Recalling their collision, Paltrow told the courtroom, “I froze when he slid between my skis. I absolutely froze and I don’t remember yelling or screaming until I was very angry at what had happened. I said, ‘You skied into my f**king back’ and he said, ‘Oh sorry, I’m sorry.’”
According to Paltrow, she thought for a second that the collision could have been a “sexual assault.” She said, “That was a quick thought that went through my head when I was trying to reconcile what was happening.”
When asked why she thought it could have been sexual, Gwyneth said, “There was a very strange grunting noise. So my brain was trying to make sense of what was happening.”
She went on, “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.
“Our bodies were almost spooning,” Gwyneth noted. “And I moved away quickly.”
Though Sanderson claims that Paltrow committed a “hit-and-run” and left the scene after the accident, she argued that her ski instructor told her that he would give her information to Sanderson. She said, “I would not have left the scene without leaving my information, and my information was left.”