Ex-Worker Suing Harvard Acquitted in Related Case

A former employee of Harvard’s Peabody Museum who is suing the University for disability discrimination, was acquitted last week of charges of on-campus trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Michael Mammone, arrested while working at the Peabody Museum last September, was found not guilty on Nov. 10 on the charge of disorderly conduct and not guilty by reason of insanity on the charge of trespassing.

Despite last week’s acquittal, the dispute between Mammone and the University continues.

According to Mammone, he is suing Harvard for failing to recognize that behavior during and leading up to his arrest was the manifestation of his bipolar psychiatric diagnosis.

Mammone’s attorney Jennifer Rieker says her client—who was fired on Sept. 4, 2002—is seeking job reinstatement and compensatory and punitive damages.

Marilyn D. Touborg, director of communications for Harvard’s Office of Human Resources and Harvard spokesperson Joe Wrinn both said they could not comment on the case.

According to court records, the museum’s human resources officer Mary Reynolds called the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) in September 2002 for “assistance with an employee that the department was having difficulty with over performance issues.”

Mammone, approached by an HUPD officer, Reynolds and a supervisor, proceeded to scream into a telephone and later at people at the scene, records indicate.

After being arrested and released later that day, Mammone said he went back to the museum to inform his friends that he was alright.

Mammone said that while he was in the Museum of Natural History using the phone, Reynolds and his supervisor approached him, resulting in a short verbal exchange.

“My same boss and the human resources officer approached me,” he said. “I then uttered a profanity.”

Mammone said he was told to leave.

According to Mammone, the alleged discrimination consisted of the supervisor and human resources officer’s failure to recognize that his profanity was a result of his disorder.

Mammone attributes the events surrounding his firing to a manic episode.

“I was definitely not myself,” he said. “For them to have arrested me and fired me is awful treatment.”

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.