An Oscar winner, a fangirl with a law degree, a retired optometrist, and a treat-giving security team sounds like the start of a joke that isn’t going to be as funny as it should be. Even if you weren’t interested in a ski trip crash between Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson - which ended yesterday with a $1 award to Paltrow - it’s been a case hard to avoid.
No stone was left unturned in the trial that felt a little more like a made-for-TV courtroom drama than an actual Utah civil case. There has been jealously over Paltrow’s height - ‘I have to wear four-inch heels just to make it to 5ft 5’, Sanderson’s lawyer Kirstin Van Orman told Paltrow, visibly thrilled to be speaking to A Real Life Star. There were countless experts, 3D animated renditions (not included as trial evidence), terrible drawings (google it, you won’t be disappointed), pretty mean remarks from Sanderson’s children about their father, and even the joy (and Obiter hates to make it come down this) of a wardrobe so fabulous it made headlines around the world.
It’s been a sports case that has captured the imagination of newspapers, fashion critics, meme makers and those looking for some light relief in their day.
It is Sanderson himself who described the case perfectly in Obiter’s humble opinion. On the day of the 2016 crash, the court heard, he sent an email to his children with a subject line: ‘I’m Famous’.
In evidence he stated that his head had been 'scrambled' and he 'didn’t pick my words well'. Obiter would politely disagree.
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