Judge Drops Most Of Claim Against Oprah Cattlemen Lose ‘Veggie Libel’ Law As Basis For Disparagement Suit

After a month of testimony in the cattlemen’s lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey, a federal judge threw out much of the case Tuesday, saying the beef producers could not use Texas’ new “veggie libel” law to sue the talk show host for bad-mouthing beef.

The decision means that jurors, when they return to court Wednesday after a long holiday weekend, will no longer be faced with the task of testing the new law. Instead, the case will be decided based on whether Winfrey disparaged the cattlemen’s business.

The law, passed in 1995, bans false disparagement of perishable foods and allows agricultural producers to sue for damages if they lose money because of someone’s lies about their product.

U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson stopped short of finding the law unconstitutional. She merely said, in a cryptic comment after a daylong hearing on Winfrey’s motions to dismiss the case, that “the statutory requirements for this case are not met.”

She granted Winfrey’s request to eliminate two of the three legal bases for the lawsuit. When jurors return Wednesday, they won’t be able to consider the veggie libel law or whether Winfrey personally defamed the cattlemen who are suing her.

That leaves only one legal avenue for the ranchers to recover damages they say resulted from an “Oprah Winfrey Show” on dangerous foods and the deadly “mad cow” disease. That legal option carries a tougher standard of proof than the veggie libel law.

The cattlemen now will have to prove under common law that Winfrey disparaged their businesses - without ever mentioning them by name on her show - or that she damaged the entire cattle industry. They also will have to convince jurors that her remarks were the sole cause of the cattlemen’s financial losses on cattle markets after the broadcast, and that the talk-show host meant to harm their business.

Under the veggie libel law, they would have had to prove only that she defamed their product by saying something she knew was false.

Traders previously testified that cattle markets plummeted on fears, which they linked to the Winfrey show, that mad cow disease would likely spread to the United States from Europe because of inadequate safeguards by the cattle industry and U.S. government. The markets leveled off within a few weeks after the April 16, 1996, broadcast.

So far, no case of mad cow disease has ever been diagnosed in the U.S. cattle herd. However, the human version of the disease occurs in one in a million people, regardless of whether they eat meat, scientists have testified. The disease has caused 23 human deaths in Europe.

Robinson’s ruling came on the 20th day of Winfrey’s trial with co-defendant Howard Lyman, a vegetarian activist who made several provocative anti-beef statements on the broadcast, including one in which he said mad cow disease could make AIDS look like the common cold.

On the show, Winfrey told her national television audience that what she had learned had convinced her to swear off hamburgers.

The cattlemen completed their presentation of evidence Friday, when Winfrey’s defense team sought to end the proceedings. Robinson, known as a cautious and thorough jurist, gave jurors an extra long holiday weekend so she could reassess the case.

On Tuesday, Winfrey attorney Charles Babcock assailed the Texas law, which was undergoing its first court test, as hopelessly vague.

“Under the plaintiffs’ theory, any person in the United States who owned a cow has a cause of action. It creates too much danger, too much risk to people speaking about generic topics,” Babcock said.

Similar laws are on the books in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota.