Litigators

Well, This Appears To Be The Whitest Lawsuit Ever

A ski crash... in Utah... involving Gwyneth Paltrow.

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(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

I don’t actually have the cultural competency to write this story, so if I screw it up, I apologize.

Actress and Aspect-Nourisher Gwyneth Paltrow is being sued by a Utah man for an alleged “hit-and-ski-away” accident at Deer Valley Resort. From NBC:

Terry Sanderson alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Third District Court in Summit County, Utah, that on Feb. 26, 2016, Paltrow was skiing “out of control” when she hit him from behind “knocking him down, landing on top of him, and causing him to suffer a concussion, brain injury and four broken ribs.”

He claims that after the collision, “Paltrow got up, turned and skied away,” leaving him “stunned, lying in the snow.”

It gets real out here in these… slopes.

Sanderson claims that a ski instructor was accompanying Paltrow. He says the instructor “falsely accused” Sanderson of causing the collision, and then skied off without offering any aid.

Sanderson apparently met with Paltrow’s attorneys, but couldn’t reach a settlement. According to Sanderson, Paltrow claims that she was downhill of Sanderson, not the other way around.

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And… that’s why I’m not knowledgeable enough to analyze this lawsuit. My understanding of, you know, gravity, tells me that it should be fairly easy to establish which person was further downhill. I further guess that ski crashes are not unlike car crashes insofar as the person who is behind is presumptively at fault in case of an accident.

Is that true? Do the normal laws of torts and physics apply? Paltrow appears to weigh between 17-29 pounds. If Sanderson was coming up fast behind her, as Paltrow claims, wouldn’t he have ripped through Paltrow like Iron Man through a window?

On the other hand, you’re telling me that Paltrow and her manservant just left a knocked-out man with broken ribs on the slopes of Utah to, like, die? Can you ski to safety with four broken ribs and brain damage? Don’t white people carry around helicopters or sherpas when they go for mountain entertainment, just in case something like this happens?

As you can tell, I don’t ski. It sounds expensive and cold. But I deeply feel I am missing something in this lawsuit. Sanderson is suing for $3.1 million, which feels like more than I would get if Gwyneth Paltrow walked into my house and stabbed me in the ass with an endocrine disruptor. It also seems like a small price to pay to dodge an attempted ski-hicular manslaughter charge.

I am confused. I’m going to get on a plane and go back to my base.

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Utah man sues Gwyneth Paltrow for allegedly knocking him down on skis, injuring him [NBC]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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