The man who accuses American actress Gwyneth Paltrow of having hit him in a skiing accident assured the court on Monday that the accident had changed his “nature”.
“I’m living another life now,” told jurors Terry Sanderson, the 76-year-old retired optometrist who says Ms. Paltrow hit him in 2016 on a Utah track, inflicting four ribs on him. broken bones and brain damage before fleeing, leaving him unconscious.
Thereafter, “my interactions with my family were more difficult,” he said. “Something is wrong with my nature […] communication is no longer so fluid.”
Mr Sanderson is seeking more than $3 million in damages from the Oscar-winning actress in 1999 for her role in ‘Shakespeare in Love’, who in turn sued for a token dollar and reimbursement of her legal costs .
According to Gwyneth Paltrow, it was Terry Sanderson who hit her.
But the latter insisted on Monday: “I was hit very hard in the back, right on the shoulder blades. (…) I have never been hit so hard, and I found myself flying.”
Asked about an email he later sent to his daughters about the collision, with the subject line ‘I’m famous’, he explained: ‘I didn’t choose my words well. I was trying to put lightness in a serious situation and it backfired on me.
“It’s the other personality that now inhabits my body,” he added.
For the lawyer of the actress, Stephen Owens, the personality changes of Mr. Sanderson would rather be linked to natural aging.