Gwyneth Paltrow allegedly left a fellow skier with a brain injury after a "hit and run" crash on the slopes in 2016, a court heard.
The Academy Award-winning actress, 50, is accused of plowing into Terry Sanderson while she was skiing down a green run at the Deer Valley resort in Park City, Utah, on February 26, 2016.
The retired optometrist is seeking $300,000 in damages from the Goop founder, claiming that the incident caused him permanent damage, as well as breaking four of his ribs at the time.
"Distracted skiers cause crashes. Defendant Gwyneth Paltrow knew that looking up the mountain and to the side, while skiing down the mountain, was dangerous," the man's attorney Lawrence D. Buhler said in his opening statement, per The New York Post.
"And she knew that skiing that way … was reckless," said Buhler, whose client is believed to have been knocked unconscious at the time of the incident.
As reported by The Daily Star, Buhler went on to say that the Shallow Hal star responded to the ordeal by "bolting down the mountain to the bottom" and leaving the man to be rescued by a patrol sled. He said the actress showed a "conscious disregard for people" on the slopes.
Paltrow countersued the former Army optometrist, arguing that he was the one who slammed into her and that she did stay at the scene. She is seeking an outcome in which Sanderson would pay her legal fees and just $1 in damages.
Sanderson's lawyer told the court that Paltrow was skiing down a green hill with her two children, her now-husband, Brad Falchuk, and four instructors when she smashed into his client from behind.
Buhler claimed that Paltrow had spent "thousands of dollars a day" on various instructors for her young children, which allowed them to skip lines.
"Ms. Paltrow has been skiing since she was three years old, she considers herself an intermediate skier. She has skied about a half a dozen times at Deer Valley ski resort," he told jurors.
Paltrow allegedly fell on top of Sanderson, which resulted in a concussion.
The court then heard how one of Paltrow's ski instructors supposedly asked Sanderson's friend if he realized "that your buddy just took out Gwyneth Paltrow."
Karlene Davidson, who was in a relationship with Sanderson at the time of the skiing accident, said their romance hit the rocks following the incident.
"He had no joy left in his life. He pushed me away," Davidson said in her testimony on Tuesday.