ELK POINT, S.D. — Giant meat packer Beef Products, Inc., based in Dakota Dunes, S.D. – believes it has a strong case against the ABC network, which four years ago broadcast a series of reports on what commonly became known as “pink slime,” referencing the company’s Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB).

 

And when the star-studded trial nears its end in about eight weeks, jurors will control whether BPI will have met a heavy burden of proof and can award damages in what would be the largest defamation case in the United States.

BPI is seeking $1.9 billion in damages from a series of 14 reports that ABC broadcast or published online in March and April 2012. Because they also are suing under the state’s Agricultural Food Product Disparagement Act, the damages could be tripled to $5.7 billion if BPI wins.

The case pits two heavyweight law firms, with ABC represented by Washington, D.C.-based Williams & Connolly LLP and BPI represented by Chicago-based Winston & Strawn LLP, and its lead attorney and former U.S. attorney Dan Webb.

During opening arguments last week, Webb told the jury that “ABC simply did not have its facts straight when it started airing this series” and that the reports, including social media references, repeatedly referred to the beef product as “pink slime.”

“What ABC tried to do is basically rename our product,” Webb said. As a whole, the reports disparaged the company and its product, and it led directly to the loss of millions in sales and the closure of three of BPI’s four packaging facilities, Webb said.

The damages that BPI seeks stem from an estimated $700 million in lost profits since 2012 and $1.2 billion in lost business value.

Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC Television and the main reporter of the series, Jim Avila, are the named defendants in the case. ABC lead attorney Dane Butswinkas countered that BPI would have preferred “secrecy” about LTFB and not address the fact that its meat product won USDA approval for mixing with ground beef in 1993 and renamed as LTFB in 2002, when a former USDA official coined the term “pink slime.”

“The evidence will show the other side of the story is one BPI did not want told,” Butswinkas said in his opening statement. “The secret ingredient is secrecy.”

He also noted that the term pink slime had been widely used by various media for years before the ABC series was broadcast. “ABC did not report facts that hadn’t been reported before,” he said. To make its LTFB product, BPI uses beef trimmings and a centrifuge to extract the fat, leaving what one of the first witnesses to testify in the case said results in a product that is “definitely meat and definitely beef” and that it was not “pink slime,” said Mindy Brashears, the head of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence.

To win its case, BPI must prove that ABC broadcast its reports knowing that what it was reporting was false or that ABC and Avila recklessly disregarded the truth.