Oprah Winfrey is now a household name with a talk show legacy that spanned generations, but she once learned the hard way the unchecked power of her influence.
In 1996, Oprah was 10 years into her long-running show when she inadvertently started some serious beef with the cattle industry in the US.
At the time, mad cow disease was still a prolific outbreak impacting both cattle and humans around the United Kingdom. And during one of her shows, Winfrey made a bold 10-word claim that had a disastrous ripple effect for her reputation and bank account.
Watch the video above.
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In a discussion with her guest, animal rights activist Howard Lyman, Winfrey made the bold declaration that their conversation about mad cow disease made her swear off beef.
“That has just stopped me cold from eating another burger,” she said offhandedly.
What Winfrey didn’t realise was the enormous influence she had on her millions of impressionable viewers.
Within two weeks from this episode airing, US beef prices crashed. It reached a 10-year low and the entire cattle industry thought they had one person to blame – Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey’s near-farcical feud with the entire beef industry reached boiling point when a group of executives filed a lawsuit, claiming her announcement had cost them millions.
Members of the Texas cattle industry alleged more than $10 million (approx. $15.2 million) in damages.
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A man named Paul Engler, the head of a beef and pork company, was the lead plaintiff.
“I couldn’t help but be infuriated,” Engler said about Winfrey’s segment, The Texas Tribune reported. “I sat there and couldn’t hardly believe what I was seeing.”
After 18 months of back and forth, a trial date was set for Winfrey v the Texas Cattle Industry.
One of the world’s biggest celebrities had descended on the town of Amarillo in Texas and it caused a frenzy.
Oprah, who was contracted to film a certain number of episodes every month, was forced to move the production of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Texas.
“So you’re on trial by day, and you’re doing the show by night,” Winfrey recalled during her show in 2012 .
“It was stressful. It was challenging. To be on trial, may I just say, is one of the worst experiences of anybody’s life.”
Larry Lemmons, a former TV reporter in Amarillo who covered the trial, later told the That Literally Happened podcast: “It was such a bizarre time for most people because of the fact that Oprah had brought her show to town and celebrities were everywhere.”
The lawsuit was a landmark trial. Specifically, it saw Winfrey and Lyman accused of “false disparagement of a perishable food product, common-law business disparagement, defamation, and negligence”.
It culminated in a six-week trial with two dozen witnesses and a jury of eight men and women.
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The jury eventually decided in Winfrey’s favour on February 28, 1998. Though the real winner, Winfrey proclaimed later, was free speech.
The talk show host victoriously emerged from the courthouse and claimed to the cameras: “Free speech not only lives, it rocks!”
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“I will continue to use my voice,” Winfrey continued, speaking to a cheering crowd.
“I believed from the beginning this was an attempt to muzzle that voice. I come from a people who have struggled and died in order to have a voice in this country, and I refuse to be muzzled.”
She also explained that she fought so hard because she and her team knew they did “nothing wrong”.
Though it was a legal win for Winfrey, she was still saddled with around $1 million in legal fees fighting the case.
The TV legend once said she never considered settling – Winfrey was determined to set a precedent for anyone else wanting to sue her.
And she held strong on her vow to steer clear of eating meat. “I am still off hamburgers,” she said after her win. “And I think I’m going to be off hamburgers.”