MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Paltrow is not quite the phony her accuser is

2023-03-30

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Incredible I know, but Gwynnie ‘I-lost-half-a-day-ski-ing’ Paltrow is not quite the narcissistic phony her accuser is – and here, members of the jury, I present the damning evidence in all its cashmere-cardigan-clutching horror

In just eight days, the Gwyneth Paltrow trial has given us so much: Arrogant litigants and even more obnoxious lawyers, specious claims, melodramatic testimony, missing witnesses (whither Apple and Moses Martin?), terrible acting, and the indisputable takeaway that Paltrow, true to image and rumor, is an unbearable snob.

Forget the Vespa meme. Paltrow’s plaintive on stand lament — ‘I lost a half-day of skiing’ — is the one percent’s new cri de coeur.

That said, and this is a really high bar to clear, plaintiff Terry Sanderson comes off worse. Way worse.

When you outdo Gwyneth Paltrow in the court of unpleasantness, you’ve got big problems. Like, prepare-to-lose-and-lose-big problems.

Over the past few days, Paltrow’s lead attorney Steve Owens — who still hasn’t taken the note from running online commentary to tone down the snark and superciliousness — nonetheless took apart Sanderson’s claims.

Would you believe that Sanderson, not Paltrow, came across as the bigger phony? The more narcissistic? The least in touch with the impression he leaves?

Here was Sanderson’s attorney asking why he broke up with his girlfriend: ‘Karlene — she’s a catch. Why’d you let her go?’

Sanderson — well-groomed, well-spoken, looking fit and together at age 76 — depicted himself as Karlene’s romantic hero, a regular ‘Titanic’ Jack giving up the door so Rose (i.e. Karlene) wouldn’t drown.

‘I’m not asking,’ he quoted himself as saying to Karlene. ‘I’m telling — you gotta leave.’ I knew she didn’t buy into this . . . I said, ‘I’m not gonna get back to normal . . . I’m a crippled vet with half a brain . . . You run.’

Forget the Vespa meme. Paltrow’s plaintive on stand lament — ‘I lost a half-day of skiing’ — is the one percent’s new cri de coeur.

Would you believe that Sanderson (above), not Paltrow, came across as the bigger phony? The more narcissistic? The least in touch with the impression he leaves?

Seriously — who talks like this? Even Judge Kent Holmberg, the epitome of patience and inscrutability, looked amused.

Sanderson on his daughters, one of whom he has been long estranged from: ‘My girls are always angels. I’m their protector.’

Again — this dialogue doesn’t really land.

Now to the damning testimony:

During his deposition, Sanderson claimed to be 5’8′ and 175-180 pounds; on the stand, he claimed to be 5’5′ and 163 pounds. He aced a memory test within half an hour of the Paltrow incident. A stroke he suffered, years before the collision, left him nearly blind in one eye. He has severely limited hearing. Pre-collison, his difficulties with depth perception meant he would only ski on days the sunlight was optimal. He adjusted his skiing to avoid hitting others in his blind spot.

He walked into walls before the accident.

And after? Sanderson traveled the world extensively. At the end of yesterday’s cross, Owens ran down the locales and adventures one by one, and it was death by a thousand paper cuts. Off Terry went to Peru, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Morocco (twice), the Canary Islands. He went ziplining in Costa Rica, rode bikes in the Netherlands, floated down the Amazon. He rode a camel in Thailand. He went scuba diving four times. Poor, infirm Terry went to a shooting range and, despite claiming he was warned he’d ‘wind up in a nursing home’ if he skied again — yes, of course, he went skiing again.

‘A few more times,’ he said. Talk about not getting out of your own way.

For a he-said-she-said case — no footage, no witnesses, just the word of plaintiff v. defendant — I’d say, ‘Pack it up, we’re done. This is nothing but a craven money grab.’

But that would deprive us of so much weirdness.

Here’s Owens asking Sanderson about his infamous ‘I’m famous’ email after learning he collided with Paltrow.

Owens: You [said], ‘I never thought it was cool I had a collision with a celebrity.’ Was that your thinking at the time?

‘I’m not into celebrity worship,’ Sanderson declared on the stand, ‘so I didn’t care at that point.’

Directed to page 15 of his deposition, Sanderson read his original answer to the question: Did he think it was cool he ran into someone famous?

For a he-said-she-said case — no footage, no witnesses, just the word of plaintiff v. defendant — I’d say, ‘Pack it up, we’re done. This is nothing but a craven money grab.’

During his deposition, Sanderson claimed to be 5’8′ and 175-180 pounds; on the stand, he claimed to be 5’5′ and 163 pounds.

‘Yes,’ Sanderson admitted. ‘I guess. Yes.’

Owens pressed Sanderson about this contradiction.

Sanderson: It’s not me . . . It’s the other personalities that’s [sic] inhabiting my body right now.

Owens: And you blame Gwyneth Paltrow for that.

Sanderson: Yes, no question.

Oh, to be in the jury room. This guy just implied that Gwyneth Paltrow put multiple personalities in his head! Oh, my dude: Gwyneth is too busy marketing candles that smell like her vagina to bother with the likes of you. Even she would admit that for all her superpowers — which generally encompass being Gwyneth Paltrow — implanting other entities in someone else’s head is beyond her reach.

If there was ever a time to give Gwynnie a pass on her lemon-sucking expressions, this is it. This guy is amazing! Truly without an iota of self-awareness. Owens has done a masterful job of letting Sanderson hang himself with his own rope: He got Sanderson to admit to a string of broken romantic and familial relationships in his wake, self-admitted anger issues, and a loss of executive functioning that has somehow left Sanderson with enough acuity to keep track of his executive functioning.

Terry Sanderson, a nation currently in dire need of distraction and laughter salutes you.

Moving on: Paltrow’s children Apple and Moses, long dangled as live witnesses in this trial, were, per Owens, ‘unavailable.’

Over the past few days, Paltrow’s lead attorney Steve Owens (above, left) — who still hasn’t taken the note from running online commentary to tone down the snark and superciliousness — nonetheless took apart Sanderson’s claims.

Paltrow returns to the courtroom after break on Wednesday for the afternoon part of her trial against retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, 76, who is suing her over a 2016 ski crash

What could keep two rich kids from sticking around at their mom’s rented $27,000-per-week mansion for an extra day is unclear, but Owens — who has never missed a chance to bitch at opposing counsel and our benevolent judge — asked that their depositions be read into evidence instead.

And so we got a junior member of Paltrow’s team named Peter Jensen III, dressed all in black, wearing a man bun and glasses and chewing gum throughout, reading the part of ‘Fake Moses.’

Q: Would you state your name for the record?

A: Protected Identity.

Protected Identity! This is the stuff of Kafka. An incipient band name. The viewer comments running alongside this piece of performance art were priceless.

‘Up next: King David.’

‘I named my child Toilet.’

Moses, 9 at the time, said he heard his mother yell, ‘What the F-word? You just ran into me.’

That was that.

Up next was the deposition of Apple Martin, also known as ‘Protected Identity.’ Apple said she neither heard nor saw the collision, but at lunch her mother said, ‘This A-hole ran into me. He ran right into my back . . . [She] was clearly visibly upset and she had a little bit of pain . . . that’s why she went to the spa to get a massage.’

As bad as this look is for Gwyneth — no matter who crashed into whom, she was so piqued that she got a massage and missed out on using her full-day ski pass — Wednesday, Day Seven, was even worse for Sanderson.

Paltrow’s side called neurologist Dr. Robert Hoesch, and after Owens got through poking fun at Hoesch’s relatively young age and accomplishments — ‘what a NERD . . . good for you,’ the smarm just dripping off his smirky, Mr. Burns-esque face — we get to the good stuff.

Hoesch, in reviewing medical records, said Sanderson’s brain injuries date back to 2009. (The collision was on February 26, 2016.) Hoesch also testified that Sanderson suffered from preexisting depression and anxiety, and that his current complaints are ‘likely attributable to preexisting health conditions.’

Sanderson’s lead attorney Robert Sykes — messy, unkempt and coughing all over this courtroom throughout the trial, which cannot endear him to the jury in these COVID-post-COVID times — brought up Sanderson’s ex Karlene again.

Sykes: ‘[Karlene] testified that there was a rapid and severe change in Terry after the ski crash . . . She said she was heartbroken. She was hoping for a marriage out of this . . . Do you remember that in her deposition?’

Paltrow’s side called neurologist Dr. Robert Hoesch (above), and after Owens got through poking fun at Hoesch’s relatively young age and accomplishments — ‘what a NERD . . . good for you,’ the smarm just dripping off his smirky, Mr. Burns-esque face — we get to the good stuff.

‘Yes.’

‘Now does that make a difference in your opinion at all?’

‘I mean it would be part of the whole compendium of what I’ve put together.’

Back to our online vivisectionists: ‘Sounds like Terry has commitment issues.’

Agreed!

So yes, things are going well for Gwyneth. One senses she knows it too, because on Wednesday, after the judge admonished everyone in court to keep their facial expressions to a minimum, who immediately began puckering, pouting, jaw-thrusting and dramatically stretching out her neck but, yes, our Gwyneth.

The verdict may seem a slam dunk, but when it comes to who is more unlikable, Paltrow or Sanderson? The court of public opinion is still out.

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