Mr. Levine’s suit claims that the Met’s investigation, which was led by Robert J. Cleary, a partner at the Proskauer Rose law firm, “amounted to nothing more than a kangaroo court,” and accused the Met of using “McCarthyite tactics.” It said that Mr. Levine had not been given “a reasonable opportunity to respond to the accusations against him.” Mr. Levine did not end up speaking to the Met’s investigators, the suit said, because his lawyers had wanted the Met to provide the names of his accusers first.

Ms. Plevan said that the Met had offered Mr. Levine “numerous opportunities to be interviewed, beginning in December.” She added that “it was only when the investigation was wrapping up, upon realization that termination was imminent, that he agreed to be interviewed, but on impossible terms, asking that the identity of his accusers, who had been promised anonymity, be disclosed.”

The lawsuit said that Mr. Levine “categorically denied having ever been engaged in an abusive sexual relationship,” and said that the accusations made against him in the press articles, including in The Times, were “inaccurate.” It particularly challenged the account given by James Lestock, a cellist who said that he was abused by Mr. Levine beginning in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old student, and continuing for years as he joined a tight-knit clique of musicians who followed Mr. Levine as his career blossomed.

The suit said that Mr. Levine had received many friendly letters over the years from Mr. Lestock, which show “a close and warm friendship with Levine that lasted decades after he alleges Levine sexually abused him in 1968.”