Doctor suing Gwyneth Paltrow became ‘angry person’ after ski crash: daughter

PARK CITY, Utah — The daughter of the doctor suing Gwyneth Paltrow over a 2016 ski accident told the court Thursday that her father became an “angry person” after the actress allegedly rammed into him on the slopes —  while denying claims he was verbally abusive before the incident.

Polly Sanderson Grasham, 49, said her dad Terry Sanderson — who claims he suffered a brain injury in the collision — was permanently changed by the incident at Deer Valley Resort in Utah. 

After the crash “he couldn’t tell the forest from the trees,” she said.

Sanderson Grasham told the eight jurors and two alternates in Utah’s Third District Court that before the crash, her dad, now 76 and a retired optometrist, was “fun-loving, very gregarious, definitely an extrovert,” Sanderson said. “He enjoyed people, dancing, outdoor activity.”

After Goop founder Paltrow allegedly crashed into him, he stopped being “engaged with anybody” 

The daughter, who shed tears during her testimony, described a moment when Sanderson was visiting her in Idaho and was a shell of a person: “He was sitting in a chair by my window in Idaho and I almost expected drool to be coming out of his mouth,” she told the jury. 

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“He’d taken himself to a remote corner, that was my first real slap in the face that something is terribly wrong.”

Once, he screamed “f—- you” repeatedly at her sister, she told. 

“I’m so mad and I’m so frustrated,” she said about his current condition.

Sanderson is suing Paltrow for $300,000 in damages, saying she negligently crashed into him and left with a traumatic brain injury.

Paltrow countersued for one dollar and said Sanderson was the one who caused the accident

During cross-examination, Paltrow’s lawyer Stephen Owens Paltrow’s attorney worked to chip away at Sanderson Grasham’s testimony, pointing to a deposition in which her younger sister Jenny said the retired doctor was verbally abusive to her and her mom far before 2016.

Jenny, who was supposed to testify and backed out, claimed her father “relentlessly tried to mold” her and was abusive in a deposition. Sanderson Grasham agreed that her father tried to influence Jenny’s decisions, but said it didn’t go as far as abuse.

Owens then asked Sanderson Grasham if she thought her sister was a liar, to which she responded that “sometimes we experience events differently.”

The exchange was so testy that after the lunch break, Owens gave a mea culpa for his line of questioning.

“I need to apologize I was being an ass earlier,” he said. “It was wrong for me to triangulate you, your dad, your sister, and your mom. I ask for your forgiveness.”

Despite the apology, he continued to grill Sanderson Grasham during the cross, and often pointed to her father’s many health issues before the accident, including hearing loss, insomnia, prostate cancer, and heart issues.

Owens also referenced therapy notes dated years before the accident about Sanderson having anger management issues.

Sanderson Grasham told the jury the $300,000 would allow her father to get the help he needs to heal from the accident. 

When asked why Sanderson emailed his daughters after the accident saying “I’m famous,” she chalked it up to his general attitude before the accident and tried to find humor in things. 

“Writing this wrong for him has really kind of consumed him. He wanted to make it right,” Sanderson Grasham said of her father.

At one point, when she mentioned her dad’s claim that Paltrow skied off after the accident, the actress nodded her head no.

Paltrow, who wore an oversized gray suit in court Thursday, rejects almost every part of Sanderson’s account that night, including that she fled the scene. She says the doctor ran into her, not the other way around.  

Earlier in the day, Dr. Alina K Fong, who treated Sanderson for his concussion from the collision, spoke about how the incident affected him in pre-recorded testimony. She also defended him against the defense’s claims his mental deterioration is from pre-existing conditions.

Fong said Paltrow’s team is not seeing Sanderson as “an individual, and someone who is suffering and has suffered and has done everything in their power to try to get better.”

“There is a really big difference between going over someone’s chart in another state, across the world, and actually having that patient in front of me, dejected, crying,” she told jurors.