The witness says the crash was ‘very difficult’

• A witness at the trial surrounding a 2016 ski accident involving Gwyneth Paltrow said Paltrow was at fault.
• Retired optometrist Terry Sanderson and Paltrow sued each other for negligence over the accident.
• Greg James Ramon, Sanderson’s skiing debut, said Paltrow bumped into Sanderson.

Gwyneth Paltrow was skiing with the man she accused of crashing on a Utah mountain, an eyewitness testified Tuesday, claiming responsibility for the movie star’s collision before she skied off.

Retired optometrist Terry Sanderson is suing Paltrow after a 2016 ski crash on a beginner slope at Deer Valley Resort in Utah, which left Sanderson with four broken ribs and a traumatic brain injury. On Tuesday, after the initial arguments, a key witness who was on the Sky meet-up team with Sanderson and by her side said Paltrow bumped into Sanderson earlier that day.

Paltrow also sued Sanderson for negligence after Sanderson sued the “Coop” creator in 2019, alleging that he bumped into her. The trial centers on Dueling’s negligence claims, where Sanderson is seeking $3 million in damages and Paltrow is seeking $1.

On Tuesday, during direct examination by Sanderson’s attorney Lawrence Buhler, retired glass company owner Greg James Ramone, an acquaintance of Sanderson’s who was on the slopes with him that day, testified that he saw Paltrow bump his friend’s back that day.

Paltrow wore a brown knit turtleneck as layers of the story unfolded on Tuesday.

“I heard this scream and I turned around and then I saw this skier hit Terry (Sanderson) in the back,” Raman said of Paltrow in court. “So hard, she hit him directly in the back.”

Ramon said Sanderson fell head first with her skis split and Paltrow on her back. Eric Christiansen, a Deer Valley ski instructor who teaches Paltrow’s son, approached them and yelled at Sanderson, who was unresponsive, Ramon testified.

“He was very hostile. At the end, I told him, ‘Man you’ve got to be thin here,'” Ramon testified, referring to his interaction with the ski instructor. The instructor asked, “What did you do?” Ramon testified to an unconscious Sanderson.

According to Ramone and Sanderson’s attorney, Paltrow took herself away moments after the collision.

“She bolted and took off and she went straight down,” Ramon said. “You don’t leave an accident, you make sure everyone is OK, you give each other contact information.”

Christiansen and Resort were initially listed as co-defendants, with Sanderson saying the instructor lied in a statement where Sanderson said he bumped into Paltrow. In 2022, Third District Judge Kent Holberg dismissed additional negligence and emotional distress claims against the instructor and the ski resort for lack of evidence.

He said Sanderson “kept talking about his ribs” after the accident, and eventually brought Sanderson to ski patrol, and later became a nurse on the mountain, because he feared for Sanderson’s cognitive ability at this point.

Paltrow’s attorney did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment. Sanderson’s attorney declined to comment.

During cross-examination, Ramone went over aspects of her confession and was grilled by Paltrow’s attorney about how long Paltrow was at the scene after the crashes and how close she and Sanderson were before the crash.

Specifically, Ramon denied knowing the contents of an email sent to Sanderson family members hours after the accident titled “I’m Famous.” Ramone denied to Paltrow’s attorney Steve Owens that he and Sanderson visited an elk ranch together.