Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey

201 F.3d 680, 2000 WL 60311
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 9, 2000
DocketNo. 98-10391
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 201 F.3d 680 (Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey, 201 F.3d 680, 2000 WL 60311 (5th Cir. 2000).

Opinions

PER CURIAM:

At issue in this case is whether The Oprah Winfrey Show and one of its guests knowingly and falsely depicted American beef as unsafe in the wake of the British panic over “Mad Cow Disease.” The district court doubted that fed cattle are protected by Texas’s equivalent of a “Veggie Libel Law,” See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. § 96.001 et seq. The court alternately held that no knowingly false statements were made by the appellees. We affirm on the latter ground only and affirm the court’s other rulings.

I. INTRODUCTION

In early 1996, a new variant of Creutz-feldt-Jakob Disease (“CJD”) was diagnosed in Britain. CJD, a form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, is a fatal disease that affects the human brain. On March 20, 1996, the British Ministry of Health announced that scientists had linked the consumption of beef infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (“BSE”) with this new CJD variant. BSE, or “Mad Cow Disease,” had been detected in British cattle as early as '1986.1 Aso a form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE triggers a deadly, degenerative brain condition in cattle. BSE is most likely to arise when cattle are fed contaminated ruminant-derived protein supplements, which are made from rendered cattle and sheep.

The postulated link between the consumption of beef and CJD caused panic in Britain. News media in the United States ran numerous stories on the subject. Afi-eles appeared in, inter alia, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. Dateline, a popular, “prime time” television news program, broadcast a report on the subject. See Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey, 11 F.Supp.2d 858, 861 (N.D.Tex.1998). Aother report, and the subject of this suit, was aired on the “Dangerous Food” broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Asserting that the beef market suffered substantial losses following the broadcast, several Texas cattle ranchers sued Oprah Winfrey, the producers and distributors of the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Howard Lyman, a guest on the show, in Texas state court. The cattlemen alleged violations of the Texas False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. §§ 96.001-.004 (“the Act”), and damages arising from the common-law torts of business disparagement, defamation, negligence, and negligence per se. The cattlemen’s suit was removed to federal court. At the close of the cattlemen’s case-in-chief, the district court culled the majority of the pending claims, saving only the business disparagement cause of action. This claim was rejected by the jury, and the cattlemen have appealed. M-though we differ with the district court’s reasoning on certain issues, we affirm.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. The “Dangerous Food” Show

As the British public panicked over the human victims in their country and over the announcement of a possible link between BSE and new-variant CJD, employees of the Oprah Winfrey Show2 laid the groundwork for an episode covering the hidden dangers in food. Aice McGee, a senior supervising producer for the Oprah Winfrey Show, and James Kelley, an editor, held a brainstorming session and decided that “dangerous food” would be a good topic for a show. The two approached Diane Hudson, the Oprah Win[683]*683frey Show’s executive producer, regarding the topic, and she approved, so long as BSE was not the only issue discussed. Kelley began preparing for the show and assigned members of his production team to research the “Mad Cow Disease” topic. Three weeks before the taping of the “Dangerous Food” show, Andrea Wishom, a researcher for the Oprah Winfrey Show, conducted research and interviewed individuals who were knowledgeable about CJD and “Mad Cow Disease.” During her research, Wishom discovered that the Center for Disease Control, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and several professors and researchers felt that “Mad Cow Disease” could not occur in the United States. In telephone conversations, however, Wishom learned that Lyman believed “Mad Cow Disease” could produce an epidemic in this country worse than AIDS. Wishom spoke with each potential guest on the telephone, discussed her research with Kelley and summarized research for Winfrey’s use during preparation and taping of the show.

On April 11, 1996, the “Dangerous Food” episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show was taped in Chicago, Illinois. Guests on the show included Lyman,3 Dr. Gary Weber,4 Dr. Will Hueston,5 Linda Marler, Dr. James Miller,6 and Beryl Rimmer. During the taping, Winfrey discussed several topics with her guests, including the discovery of new-variant CJD in Britain, the gruesome symptoms of the disease, the impact of the disease on the families of those stricken, the threat of the disease in the United States, and the steps being taken by cattlemen and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prevent an outbreak of BSE in this country. Over the course of the taping, Lyman made several statements regarding the threat of BSE in the United States that Drs. Weber and Hueston found misleading. The experts responded to these statements with facts designed to show the cautious response that the United States had taken to the threat of BSE. They explained the extensive animal testing and oversight used to discover and prevent the spread of BSE in United States cattle. They noted that these procedures had been in place for nearly a decade and that no case of BSE had ever been reported in the United States. They also pointed out that cattlemen voluntarily banned on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding while the Department of Agriculture considered a mandatory ban on the practice.

After the taping, Kelley edited extensively to pare down the “Mad Cow Disease” segment for broadcast.7 From approximately eight minutes of Dr. Hue-ston’s statements recorded during the taping, only 37 seconds remained in the broadcast. As instructed by Winfrey and McGee, Kelley cut out “the redundancies” in Dr. Weber’s and Dr. Hue-ston’s interviews. These “redundancies” included portions of the following: (1) Dr. Weber’s references to the voluntary ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding, (2) Dr. Weber’s explanation of what ruminant-to-ruminant feeding entailed, (3) Dr. Weber’s distinctions between Britain’s approach to BSE and the United [684]*684States’s more careful approach, (4) Dr. Weber’s response to an audience member’s question concerning the examination of cattle before slaughter, and (5) most of Dr. Hueston’s comments, including a description of the safeguards against slaughter-house processing of sick cattle. Also edited out was Lyman’s admission that American beef is safe. None of Dr. Miller’s statements appeared in the show as broadcast. The edited show was broadcast on April 16, 1996.

B. The Oprah Crash

Following the April 16, 1996, broadcast of the “Dangerous Food” program, the fed cattle market in the Texas Panhandle dropped drastically. In the week before the show aired, finished cattle sold for approximately $61.90 per hundred weight. After the show, the price of finished cattle dropped as low as the mid-50’s; the volume of sales also went down. The cattlemen assert that the depression continued for approximately eleven weeks.

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Bluebook (online)
201 F.3d 680, 2000 WL 60311, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/texas-beef-group-v-winfrey-ca5-2000.