The Rundown: The Gwyneth Paltrow Ski Trial Was A Goddamn Delight From Beginning To End

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

It is nice to have a silly little thing to focus on sometimes. It can be anything, really. Maybe a puzzle you’re doing or a recipe you’re tinkering with or maybe you’re trying out a new three-wood at the driving range. Or maybe, if you’re me and apparently everyone I follow on social media, it was the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial that just wrapped up in Utah this week. Either way, it’s nice to have hobbies.

The short version of the proceedings goes something like this: A retired optometrist — he is always identified as “a retired optometrist” in the press, which is fun — sued Gwyneth Paltrow for hundreds of thousands of dollars because, he claimed, she skied into him at an alarming rate of speed and caused him any number of life-altering maladies. She, in turn, claimed he was the aggressor in the ski collision and countersued him for one dollar. And this somehow went to trial. Do you understand how crazy this is Cases like this never, ever get to trial. Lawyers get in a room and hammer out an agreement and a bunch of people write checks to each other and everyone goes home. The fact that this made it to a courtroom was already about an 8 out of 10 on the Nutso Meter. (Official legal term.)

But then the actual trial started and things just kept getting wilder and weirder. Paltrow’s attorney — presumably a high-powered lawyer from a firm that charges more per hour than you paid for your first car — opened things by waving around a dollar bill in court for some reason. The plaintiff’s lawyer got Paltrow on the stand and started peppering her with questions — UNDER OATH — about her friendship with Taylor Swift, which is a questionable legal strategy but a great way to dig for hot gossip under the threat of perjury. Gwyneth showed up almost every day wearing the most Defendant In A Ski Trial outfits you’ve ever seen. A huge chunk of the case hinged on, I swear to God, slope etiquette, which was full-on written up and explained by the New York Damn Times.

On Friday, Kristin VanOrman, one of Mr. Sanderson’s lawyers, focused questions for Ms. Paltrow on whether she understood ski slope etiquette and asked her to review her account of what happened. One of the key disputes of the trial has to do with which skier was downhill, and therefore had the right of way. Both Ms. Paltrow and Mr. Sanderson have claimed that they were the downhill skier.

And it gets better. So much better. Like, you probably looked at the parties here — two wealthy people suing each other over a winter sports mishap at a luxury resort — and assumed there would be some high-powered expert witnesses and maybe even CGI renderings of the fateful moment of impact. Real, like, “TNT Original Series Courtroom Drama” stuff. Well, nope. Not even a little. What we had instead were… stick figures. A lot of them. Look at this.

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) March 28, 2023

And this!

— Vulture (@vulture) March 28, 2023

Perfect. Incredible. Just a hoot all around, made even more delightful by the fact that neither party in the case was… I don’t want to say “likable” because I’m sure they both have family and friends that care about them, but let’s just say that my heart wasn’t breaking for either of the fantastically wealthy and difficult people who took a ski trial to court in front of a judge and the world. Completely harmless and fun. The plaintiff’s lawyer tried some weird legal strategy that involved buttering Paltrow up before sneaking in the hammer, which was hilarious…