Amaani Lyle applied for the position of writers’ assistant for Friends, a television show about the lives of young, sexually active adults. During her interview, she was told that one of the most important aspects of the job was taking very copious and detailed notes for the writers’ meetings where story lines, jokes, and dialogue were discussed. She was also told that she must type incredibly fast. Four months after she was hired, the Friends producers fired Lyle because she consistently missed very important story lines and jokes during the writers’ meetings and typed too slowly.
Lyle subsequently filed a claim for sexual harassment. She claimed that during the writers’ meetings, the writers constantly engaged in discussions about anal and oral sex, discussed their sexual exploits both real and fantasized, commented on the sexual nature of the female actors on the show, made and displayed crude drawings of women’s breasts and vaginas, pretended to masturbate, and altered the words on the scripts and other documents to create new words such as “tits” and “penis.”
Warner Brothers defended on the basis that the writers’ job was to create jokes, dialogue, and story lines for an adult-oriented situation comedy:
[B]ecause “Friends” deals with sexual matters, intimate body parts and risqué humor, the writers of the show are required to have frank sexual discussions and tell colorful jokes and stories (and even make expressive gestures) as part of the creative process of developing story lines, dialogue, gags, and jokes for each episode. Lyle, as a writers’ assistant, would reasonably be exposed to such discussions, jokes, and gestures.
Who should prevail on Lyle’s sexual harassment claim? [Lyle v. Warner Brothers Television, 132 P.3d 211 (Cal.2006).]