Although a woman hurt at an Everclear concert filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to hold the band partly responsible for injuries she suffered during their recent Boston concert, the group's manager denies it had anything to do with the incident. The woman, 23-year-old Tameeka Messier, contends she suffered damage to her head and neck after 233-lb. New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe and 305-lb. lineman Max Lane each leapt from the stage and landed on her during Everclear's Nov. 13 performance at the Paradise Rock Club.

\\The suit, which was filed in Boston's Suffolk Superior Court and also seeks unspecified damages from both Patriots players and the Paradise, claims lead singer Art Alexakis agreed to allow Lane on stage and then urged Bledsoe to follow him. According to published accounts of the suit, Alexakis then allegedly encouraged both players to stage dive, and announced that "Drew is going to stage dive." According to club rules, stage-diving at the Paradise is prohibited.

\\Messier's account contradicts the statement released by the band's label, Capitol Records, several days after the incident, in which Alexakis said "we had no idea that Drew and the other Patriots were going to come onstage, and not in our wildest dreams did we ever think that they were going to stage-dive."

\\Everclear manager Darren Lewis says the band is standing behind its statement. "Art's told me repeatedly -- after the incident and even before this media frenzy over it -- that he never invited [Bledsoe and Lane] on stage," Lewis says. "It was the club -- a local heroes kind of thing in letting the players on stage."

\\Lewis says he was "surprised" to learn that Everclear was named in Messier's suit. The band, he says, sent Messier flowers, a telegram, and subsequently attempted to visit her when it returned to Boston to play a charity show earlier this month. "All we got was a phone call from her lawyer ... and he never indicated that he thought we were in any way responsible for what happened." No matter what happened there, we were playing, so the band is going to get named no matter what." Local police had investigated, and then dropped, the matter after receiving conflicting accounts about what transpired at the club.

\\Lawrence Frisoli, a Cambridge, Mass.-based personal injury lawyer, predicts that while Messier appears to have a solid case against the players, she may have a tougher time proving Everclear liable for her injuries. The band would be liable only if they encouraged the players to jump, and the plaintiff will have to show that the band urged the players to jump," he says.

\\A New England Patriots spokesperson s