Wintour In $140,000 Worker's Comp Default

MAY 18--Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue magazine, has defaulted on nearly $140,000 in payments owed to New York State's Worker's Compensation Board, which was forced to cover an injured employee's medical bills because the fashion titan failed to carry required insurance coverage.

State officials recently secured two legal judgments against the 54-year-old fashion titan, who is being dunned in connection with a December 1997 injury suffered by a personal employee of Wintour's (as opposed to a Conde Nast hand).

According to court records and a WCB spokesman, Wintour has defaulted on payments owed to the state's Uninsured Employers Fund, which pays medical expenses and compensation for injured workers whose employer was not properly insured at the time of an accident.

On April 1, a $104,403 judgment (a copy of which you'll find here) was entered against Wintour and David Shaffer, her ex-husband. On May 11, a $32,639 judgment against Wintour alone was recorded in New York State Supreme Court.

Both judgments stemmed from Uninsured Employers Fund outlays related to the December 1997 injury, according to WCB spokesman Jon Sullivan, who added that state regulations barred him from disclosing the injured worker's identity, details of the injury, or even where the accident occurred.

The state's move to seek the legal judgments came after the conclusion of in-house administrative law proceedings and the issuance last year of final notices warning that if payment was not immediately received, "judgment will be filed and the employer is subject to seizure of assets."

At the time of the 1997 accident, Wintour and Shaffer, who divorced in 2001, lived in a Manhattan townhouse that the Vogue boss purchased in May 1992 for $1.4 million. The following April, Wintour received a $1.64 million mortgage on the property from Conde Nast. (3 pages)