Just when you thought Gwyneth Paltrow's court case couldn't get more bizarre... It just has.
The 50-year-old GOOP founder is currently being sued by 76-year-old Utah optometrist Dr. Terry Sanderson, who is claiming that he had been vacationing at the Deer Valley resort in Utah when an allegedly "out of control" Paltrow "bolted" down the slope and crashed into him.
According to the lawsuit, obtained by Sky News, Paltrow allegedly flew down the ski slope, "knocking [Sanderson] down hard, knocking him out, and causing a brain injury, four broken ribs and other serious injuries [...] Paltrow got up, turned and skied away, leaving Sanderson stunned, lying in the snow". The actress, meanwhile, has claimed that he crashed into her.
Sanderson was initially seeking damages of $3 million but this was subsequently reduced to $300,000 after his original request was dismissed by a judge, who also removed certain pieces of evidence, as reported by Metro. Paltrow has denied any wrongdoing and is countersuing Sanderson for $1, claiming that the incident was "categorically" his fault.
Many moments in the trial have captured the attention of the internet - including a comment that Paltrow made about how she'd been inconvenienced by the collision, which caused her to lose "half a day" of skiing.
On Friday (March 24), the Shakespeare In Love actress took the stand to testify in the civil case. During her testimony, she was asked by Kristin VanOrman - Sanderson's attorney - about the "losses" she had suffered from the ski collision.
When questioned about her comments that Sanderson had "deterred [Paltrow] from enjoying the rest of what was a very expensive vacation", the actor nonchalantly responded with: "Well... we lost half a day of skiing."
During Sanderson's testimony - in which he was forced to defend an email he sent following the accident that had the subject line: "I'm famous..." - he argued that he had hoped someone at the ski resort would have had a GoPro on and caught the incident.
"I do have [a GoPro], yes, but I did not have it on that day," he stated, adding that he hasn't seen any footage of the collision, which he has described as a "hit-and-run" accident. "Absolutely not. I would have loved to have it. It was what we needed," he added.
Now, it seems that getting footage of the incident might be easier than both legal teams had anticipated, after an online sleuth following the case managed to hack into a group chat that was later submitted into evidence.
Michael Fletcher cracked the code to gain access to a Meetup group link for a chat where Craig Ramon - the only eyewitness to the collision - wrote several times that he saw Paltrow crashing into Sanderson.
"You could not make this up. Gwyneth took out Terry last week," Ramon wrote in the chat, via The New York Post. "Last Saturday, her son broke his arm skiing at Park City. Gwyneth was staying at the Montage. She took her plane out of Millionaire Airport. What makes me mad is Gwyneth took out Terry and then took off," he added.
The chat proves that Sanderson and Ramon both knew Paltrow was the other party involved in the accident, despite both of them arguing otherwise.
Fletcher stated that it was easy to hack into the chat, saying: "Like, I can't believe they didn't do this already. It's almost a joke. All I did was create a login for the website. If it's a website that requires a login, you can't access anything on it without a login … then the link works. It's simple."
He continued: "It's comical how easy it was. They kept repeating that it's the most important piece of evidence, and they couldn't figure it out. They had no idea how to open the link."