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You may recall Lyle v. Warner Brothers Television Productions, the case that blew the sitcom writer's room door wide open: A female Friends writer's assistant, fired after four months, sued the show for sexual harassment, claiming the show's writer-producers subjected her to a daily barrage of sexually explicit and racist comments (sample complaint: "69. [Executive Producer Andrew] Reich said that [Courtney] Cox's pussy was full of dried up twigs and said that if her husband put his dick in her she'd break in two.") After an LA County Superior Court judge initially dismissed the suit, the Court of Appeal ruled it should go to trial. The California Supreme Court began hearing arguments yesterday, and according to the LAT, so far they seem to be siding with the grotesquely overpaid, wisecracking white guys:

During a hearing in Sacramento, two of the state high court's justices observed that Amaani Lyle, 32, was warned before she was hired for "Friends" that she would be subjected to sexually explicit talk in the writers' room. [...]

Justice Joyce L. Kennard appeared to find it significant that Warner Bros. had told Lyle to expect "a lot of sexual talk, very frank talk and at times vulgar" language. "She said, 'No problem,' " Kennard related. [...]

But Scott O. Cummings, who represented Lyle, said she was never cautioned that one of the writers would be "drawing a woman's vagina and making jokes about it." [...]

"Many ideas end up on the cutting room floor, but the writers can't be punished for ideas that were never used," [Warner Bros. counsel Adam] Levin said.

With the court's sympathies swaying towards the defendants, we wouldn't be surprised if their closed-door chambers discussions contained a few bawdy potshots at the bailiff's "ginormous cans," followed by a call into the stenographer to go on a Coffee Bean run.