A group of 137 members of the Cactus Feeding Club Inc. filed suit in 69th District Court here on Thursday asking for one million dollars in damages, attorney Kevin Isern said. The litigation is based on the same comments about beef made on Winfrey's show in 1996 that led to a lawsuit brought by Paul Engler, President of Cactus Feeders. Engler lost that lawsuit last month when a jury threw out their case.

Isern represented Engler in that lawsuit, which argued the talk-show hostess had broken Texas' False Defamation of Perishable Food Products Law.

US District Judge Mary Lou Robinson threw out the earlier lawsuit under the state's food disparagement law, saying that live cattle are not covered by the statute. The case then moved forward under business disparagement common law which sets a much more difficult burden of proof.

Theplaintiffs in that case have appealed the decision. Winfrey prevailed by arguing that she had merely exercised her First Amendment Right of free speech in laying out the facts on her program about the brain-wasting Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or `mad cow' disease.

The new suit targets Oprah, her production company, and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman, who had sharply criticised the beef industry on the program by Winfrey. They were also the defendants in the earlier legal action. The new lawsuit was filed in Dumas, a town of fewer than 20,000 people, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Amarillo, where Cactus has one of its major feedyards.