Oprah’s Lawyers Want Second
Beef Damage Suit Thrown Out

AMARILLO — Attorneys for daytime television queen Oprah Winfrey have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Winfrey, her production company and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman by cattle feeders in Texas.

Earlier this year, a jury in federal court in Amarillo found for Winfrey and company in a lawsuit brought by the owners of several feedyards in the Texas Panhandle. In April, the people owning the cattle being fed in those feedyards filed suit in state district court in Dumas, about 40 miles north of Amarillo. Attorneys for Winfrey and Lyman moved the suit to federal court in Amarillo, the same court, under U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson, where jurors found for Winfrey in February.

The suits revolve around remarks made by Winfrey and Lyman on Winfrey's April 16, 1996, television show which cattlemen claim were disparaging and caused a dramatic drop in live cattle prices.

On May 7, the defendants asked the judge to dismiss the new suit, claiming that the cattle feeders failed to state a claim for false disparagement of perishable food products, failed to meet specific constitutional elements of speech-based injurious falsehood claims, and failed to state claims for negligence. Winfrey's lawyers also claim in their motion that the state's False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Law is unconstitutional.

In the earlier suit, the judge threw out the state's "veggie libel law" as a cause of action, saying it didn't apply.

Winfrey's attorneys last week also claimed that some of the plaintiffs bringing the suit did not even exist at the time the remarks complained of by the cattle feeders were made on Winfrey's show. Several of the groups weren't formed until a month after the show, the lawyers said in their motion.

"This suit is nothing more than an attempt to harass, vex, extort and wrest a result different from the unequivocal final judgment of this court and the unanimous verdict of the 12 jurors in the Beef Group action, who after five and a half weeks of trial in this court heard the best these plaintiffs and their counsel had to offer and decided soundly against them," Winfrey's lawyers said in their motion.

"This suit is a waste of judicial resources and taxpayers dollars as well as a vexatious attempt to silence free speech."

In her final ruling, Judge Robinson wrote that the case was governed by the First Amendment and was a matter of public concern. She also ruled that live fed cattle are not a perishable food product as defined by law.