Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [175]
“Howard, how do you know for sure that the cows are ground up and fed back to the other cows?” asked Oprah.
“Oh, I’ve seen it,” said Lyman. “These are USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] statistics.”
Looking sick, Oprah turned to her audience. “Now, doesn’t that concern y’all a little bit right here, hearing that? It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger. I’m stuck.… Dr. Gary Weber says we don’t have a reason to be concerned. But that in itself is disturbing to me. Cows should not be eating other cows.… They should be eating grass.” The audience roared their approval.
The next day cattle prices dropped on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the cattlemen blamed Oprah, although a livestock analyst with Alaron Trading Corporation said, “The program [only] exacerbated what was already a negative situation in the market.” Oprah defended herself, saying, “I am speaking as one concerned consumer for millions of others. Cows eating cows is alarming. Americans needed and wanted to know that. I certainly did. We think we were fair. I asked questions that I think that the American people deserve to have answered in light of what is happening in Britain.”
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association objected to the “unbalanced” editing of the show, pulled $600,000 in network advertising, and threatened to sue Oprah under a Texas statute that outlaws making bad and untruthful statements about perishable food products. Cowed, Oprah aired a second “Dangerous Foods” show the following week (April 23, 1996) and pointedly did not include Howard Lyman, who had said the U.S. livestock industry was feeding “roadkill” to cattle. An angry rancher later said the second show was “too little too late” because Oprah “didn’t go on the program and eat a hamburger before the world.”
Within six weeks, various cattle groups had banded together to sue her, King World Productions, Harpo, and Howard Lyman, seeking $12 million in damages. For the next year Oprah geared up to defend herself, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers and jury consultants, in addition to the expense of moving her show to Amarillo, Texas, for a six-week trial in federal court. In the past when she had skirted the line between responsible and irresponsible comments, she had not been called to account, except for her show on devil worship, during which she introduced the suggestion of Jews sacrificing their children. After meeting with Jewish leaders and apologizing, she was allowed to move on. This time was different: the cattlemen, seeking revenge, wanted to go to court, despite efforts made on Oprah’s behalf to settle the case.
Phil McGraw (later known as Dr. Phil, when he became a talk show host) was working as a trial consultant and had been retained by Oprah’s lawyers to help plan their courtroom strategy and prepare the defendants for trial. He recalled meeting with Oprah and her attorneys to discuss settling the case instead of going to trial. When Oprah asked what he thought, McGraw said, “If you fight this to the bitter end, the line at the Sue Oprah window is going to get a lot shorter.” Actually, that line was never long, because Oprah’s wealth had protected her from serious litigation: few people wanted to go up against her bottomless purse and crushing teams of lawyers. Other than a few pesky lawsuits here and there, including one from former Harpo photographers Paul Natkin and Stephen Green, who sued Oprah (and settled) over a copyright infringement, she had been fairly lucky. In a deposition during the photographers’ case, she said, “My intent always is to own myself and every part of myself that I can, including photographs, a building, everything in the building. I have, you know, created a culture … at Harpo of ownership.” The attorneys representing the photographers recalled Tim Bennett testifying that Oprah did not know the difference between a W2 form and a 1099, which they found “totally