According to Rieker, a Harvard psychiatrist diagnosed her client as being in a highly manic state a month before his arrest. The weekend prior to the incident, Mammone had been transported to Boston Medical Center “based on paranoid behavior,” Rieker said. Mammone was later transferred to McLean Hospital, which specializes in mental health services, she said.

Mammone filed the lawsuit, for which he anticipates a ruling by May, in December 2002 in Middlesex Superior Court.

Discrimination lawsuits are relatively common across the University, with several filed in federal and district courts each year. Earlier this fall a female librarian at the Design School’s Loeb Library filed suit against the University for gender and racial discrimination.

In that case, 39-year-old Desiree Goodwin has alleged that she was unfairly denied over a dozen promotions at several of Harvard’s libraries during her nine years at the University.

In 2001, a judge overturned a verdict that would have found the University guilty of gender discrimination in another lawsuit, where Tamara Awerbuch-Friedlander alleged that she was refused promotion to an assistant professor position because she was a woman.

—Jenifer L. Steinhardt contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Hera A. Abbasi can be reached at abbasi@fas.harvard.edu.