As a man who has seen the inside of many a courtroom and has intimate knowledge of the Deer Valley ski slopes, notorious former NFL player OJ Simpson finds himself in the unique position of being able to offer expert insight on the Gwyneth Paltrow ski collision trial.
And offer it he did.
On Wednesday, Simpson took to his Twitter account to relay a personal tale in which he revealed that he had a similar collision on the same slopes in which 50-year-old actress Gwyneth Paltrow collided with 76-year-old Terry Sanderson.
“I was watching today, I saw the run that their accident happened on,” Simpson told his more than 888k followers. “It was the same run that my accidents happened at Deer Valley, and I don’t know who you can determine whose fault it was.”
Skiing, sometimes it’s no one’s fault #GwynethPaltrowSkiCrashTrial pic.twitter.com/giWfCr51AJ
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) March 29, 2023
Sanderson, a retired optometrist, is suing Paltrow, claiming she left him with a severe brain injury following their collision on the slopes at Utah’s Deer Valley Ski Resort in 2016. Paltrow claims that it was Sanderson who slammed into her.
Actor Gwyneth Paltrow enters court during her civil trial over a collision with another skier on March 29, 2023, in Park City, Utah. (Rick Bowmer-Pool/Getty Images)
“Deer Valley is a classy place,” Simpson continued. “I never went back, mainly because I thought [the runs] were real narrow, certainly far narrower than most of the places that I went skiing,” Simpson said to his more than 800,00 followers.
“But accidents happen skiing, I don’t know how you could try to sue anybody for crashes on a ski slope. You see it all the time.”
Simpson feels the narrow runs may have played a part in the accident.
“I’m flying down this run, and at the last minute, this lady is kind of turning from my left and she comes all the way kind of across, and we crash and we both go down,” Simpson said of his accident at Deer Valley in the mid-nineties. The former Bills running back said that he and the woman were very polite after the accident.
However, after the second collision, politeness gave way to blame.
“I crashed with the same woman twice on one run and if you asked me, it was her fault. And I’m sure if you asked her, it was my fault,” Simpson said. “I’m just sayin’, it’s part of skiing. Skiing, you’re going to have accidents. Lawsuits. I don’t know how.”
Paltrow has countersued Sanderson for $1 and the covering of her legal fees. Sanderson is seeking $300,000 to cover medical expenses.