As the jury exited the courtroom to reach a verdict in Gwyneth Paltrow’s farcical ski trial, a legal team separate from the entire affair made an impassioned plea for … journalists’ rights. An attorney representing various news organizations — including the AP, NBC, ABC, CNN, Daily Mail, and Court TV — asked the judge to consider the First Amendment, which we think is the right to a free press, filing a motion to change the electronic-media and decorum order that previously banned cameras pointing at Paltrow’s defense table. We have a right to be unobtrusively nosy. “This has been a marvelous opportunity for the public to observe how the court reaches decisions, how cases are litigated, and we all benefit from that transparency, that accountability,†the attorney said, arguing that the public seeing counsel’s table when the verdict is read “is the most important part of the trial, what we’ve all been leading up to.†Seeing the Goop queen’s reaction to the verdict is indeed our right!
The right to a fair trial by an impartial jury (the Sixth Amendment) also came up during the closing arguments, when the plaintiff’s side inadvertently went on about how much Winston Churchill would have appreciated the proceedings. “We’re the only country that still has the jury system where people like you decide the cases,†accuser Terry Sanderson’s lawyer began after bringing up British kings, the Magna Carta, and New England pilgrims. “And Winston Churchill, the prime minister of England during World War II, said, ‘America is a great country, and one of the reasons it’s so great is it’s jury system … if you want to weaken America, take away it’s jury system.’â€
The plaintiff’s legal team alleged that Paltrow had hit Sanderson, conspired with Deer Valley Resort ski staff to falsify the incident report, and owes him $3.2 million in damages, per a whiteboard math equation. The defense, on the other hand, maintained that Sanderson struck Paltrow, costing her not only half a day of skiing but half a day of bonding time with her family — damages that amount to $1.