Posted on 09/17/2002 11:52:35 PM PDT by weegee
After four years and escalating legal fees, a federal judge has dismissed a lingering lawsuit accusing Oprah Winfrey of maligning the beef industry.
U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson threw out "all claims and causes of action asserted or that could have been asserted" by Cactus Feeding Club and against Winfrey, her production company and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman.
The lawsuit, filed in April 1998, was similar to another suit filed two years earlier that went to trial in Robinson's court in January 1998. The first suit caused Winfrey to move her popular talk show to Amarillo for several episodes during the trial, creating a carnival-like atmosphere in the Texas Panhandle city for six weeks.
After Winfrey won at trial, 138 livestock owners sued her again in Dumas, a town of 13,000 about 45 miles north of Amarillo. But the case was quickly moved back to Robinson's federal court, over the objections of plaintiff's attorney Kevin Isern, and had sat there for four years.
"It was kind of a soft landing to a hard trial," said Chip Babcock, a top-gun First Amendment attorney who represented Winfrey in the case.
Cattlemen contended in both suits that Lyman violated Texas' "veggie libel" law during an April 1996 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show by saying U.S. beef could be at risk of spreading mad cow disease.
The incurable illness, blamed for several human deaths in England, had not been detected in U.S. herds before the show or in the 6 1/2 years since.
Plaintiffs also accused Winfrey's show of editing the program to portray the beef industry negatively and complained that her vow never to eat another hamburger also damaged potential sales.
In the weeks after the show, already slumping cattle prices dropped to 10-year lows. Cactus Feeders Inc. owner Paul Engler, who was behind both lawsuits, unsuccessfully appealed the verdict to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Babcock said his side expects to recover $85,000 in court costs, but otherwise Robinson ruled each side must cover its own expenses in her order dated Aug. 27.
Cattlemen contended in both suits that Lyman violated Texas' "veggie libel" law during an April 1996 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show by saying U.S. beef could be at risk of spreading mad cow disease.The report was ungrounded hysteria. If you think that the lawsuit was nonsense then the notion of an agricultural libel law shold also sound like nonsense to you, yet it passed through the legislature.The incurable illness, blamed for several human deaths in England, had not been detected in U.S. herds before the show or in the 6 1/2 years since.
Plaintiffs also accused Winfrey's show of editing the program to portray the beef industry negatively and complained that her vow never to eat another hamburger also damaged potential sales.
In the weeks after the show, already slumping cattle prices dropped to 10-year lows.
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