Man’s Lawsuit Accuses Ex-Boss of Sex Harassment

In a variation of the sexual harassment claims that hit some top executives in the record industry in the early 1990s, a Superior Court lawsuit filed this week accuses a former vice president of A & M Records of sexually harassing his male assistant.

Heath Byers alleges that Mark Mazzetti--until recently an A & M executive responsible for such musicians as Janet Jackson and Sting--made repeated sexual overtures in the form of lewd comments and unwanted touching.

In the lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles and announced at a Tuesday news conference, Byers also charges that Mazzetti threatened to replace him as an administrative assistant if he did not respond to the advances.

Byers, 27 and heterosexual, maintains that Mazzetti showed up uninvited one night at his apartment and asked to spend the night, exposed himself several times, kissed Byers on the ear on a number of occasions and ordered him to remove pornographic disks from Mazzetti’s computer.

Jay Coggan, Mazzetti’s attorney, dismissed the allegations as “totally fabricated, unfounded and untrue.”

Coggan asserted that Byers invented the accusations to pressure Mazzetti into promoting him.

The suit names A & M as well as Mazzetti. Byers charges that when he initially complained about Mazzetti, the firm took no action.

A & M attorney Patricia Glaser termed the allegations against A & M “categorically without merit.”

Coggan said the company found Byers’ charges untrue but nonetheless dismissed Mazzetti in March.