020932 Rancher-Oprah Beef Skewered

It's officially time for Texas cattle ranchers to round up their wagons and leave Oprah Winfrey alone.

A federal judge has finally put the longtime libel case against the daytime diva out to pasture by throwing out a beef industry lawsuit that accused Oprah of "veggie libel."

Therefore, "all claims and causes of action asserted or that could have been asserted" by Cactus Feeding Club Inc. against Winfrey, her production company and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman are officially null and void, according to U.S. District Judge Mary Robinson.

"It was kind of a soft landing to a hard trial," Oprah attorney Chip Babcock told the Associated Press.

The long-simmering showdown with angry cattle ranchers has indeed been tiresome for the Emmy-winning television personality.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 1998, is similar to an unsuccessful $10 million state court suit the cattlemen brought in 1996 that asserted Winfrey defamed their cows. During that trial, Winfrey had to relocate her popular syndicated program from Chicago to Amarillo, Texas, to defend herself. But her exile to the Lone Star State was successful, and she won the case. An appeals court upheld the verdict.

Soon after, 138 livestock owners lassoed Winfrey with another lawsuit, this time at the federal level. They claimed the talk show maven had violated the "veggie libel" law--a statute designed to protect food products from disparagement--by implying that U.S. beef could be at risk of spreading mad-cow disease. Oprah had vowed on her talk show never to eat another hamburger. The ranchers claimed she was responsible for a huge dip in sales.

The case quickly moved to the back of the court docket, however, and has remained there for the past four years.

In spite of the Oprah-fied verdict, the cattle ranchers say they're not disappointed.

"We had two objectives in the initial suit," he said. "One was to recover the tremendous losses we experienced. The second was to prove to our consumers that America's beef is wholesome and nutritious," Paul Engler, CEO of Cactus and the force behind both lawsuits, says in a statement.

Engler adds that he's actually pleased with the outcome of his efforts and believes the ranchers are the winners in the "court of public opinion."

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