Wintour nanny gets €1.7m settlement
A former nanny for Vogue editor Anna Wintour who said she got severe nerve and brain damage from paint thinner used outside the journalist’s house settled her case for €1.7m.
The names of the paying defendants were sealed, said Lori Feldt’s lawyer Carl Lustig.
Feldt, 31, said the fumes came from paint thinner used on December 2, 1997, to remove red paint, which had been thrown by anti-fur activists at British-born Wintour’s Manhattan townhouse.
Feldt testified that she passed out while workers sent by Condé Nast – Vogue’s parent company – were cleaning. A maid who entered the Greenwich Village house later that day found her lying on the floor.
“The fumes were very, very strong,” Feldt testified. She said that she went from excellent health and a physically active lifestyle to having headaches, numbness in her face and hands, and memory, balance and vision problems.
Lustig said the paint thinner contained the toxic chemical toluene.
Wintour was not named in the $50m (€39.9m) lawsuit against Condé Nast and the cleaning contractor. Her lawyers said Wintour was not held responsible under the terms of the settlement.
The settlement came on the seventh day of the trial, which began on October 8.
Feldt, who now lives in Lopez, Washington, refused to comment as she left court yesterday.
