Oprah, free speech 'rock.' (Oprah Winfrey vs. Texas cattlemen)(Brief Article)

The talk show queen and her contingent hailed it as a classic victory of free speech over the demagogues of subjugation, a.k.a. Texas cattlemen. Instead, the case in which the cattlemen sued Oprah Winfrey for the cattle market's bearish reaction to her April 1996 comment - "It has just stopped

"Free speech not only lives, it rocks," Winfrey was quoted as saying after the trial. But the face-off between the First Amendment and cattlemen didn't materialize after the Judge threw out the claim under Texas' "veggie libel law," which prohibits disparaging remarks against beef. Without the law, the cattlemen had to rely on mere defamation. That is, if Winfrey made statements that she knew were false with the intention of harming the plaintiffs, then she would be liable.

"It never was a case of free speech," says Burt Rutherford of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association. "It was a case of responsible speech, but the jury never even got that far."

In the end, traders were left with another reminder that markets move for many reasons, even spurious ones. Be prepared.