Everstory Partners Lawsuit: Harassment, Retaliation, Arbitration

The main Everstory Partners lawsuit is Sheehan v. Everstory Partners, a federal employment case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in which five former employees accuse the country’s second-largest cemetery and funeral home operator of sexual harassment, retaliation, and pressuring workers to violate Pennsylvania laws on the handling of human remains. A federal judge has already refused to send the case to arbitration and refused to dismiss it. Jury trial is scheduled for June 7, 2027.¹

Who Is Suing and What They Claim

The plaintiffs are Ciara Sheehan, Justine Heydorn, Lisa Polascak, Tara Iannacone, and Lorraine Hernandez. All five worked at two Everstory-owned facilities in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Kirk & Nice Suburban Chapel and Sunset Memorial Park. They sued Everstory and supervisor Matthew Sobon under Case No. 24-6581.

Their amended complaint runs to eight counts. The core claims are brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act for hostile work environment, disparate treatment sex discrimination, and retaliation. Polascak adds a wrongful discharge claim and a claim under the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law.²

The Harassment Allegations

The complaint centers on two male managers: Funeral Director and General Manager Joe Lebisky and supervisor Matthew Sobon. According to the filing, Lebisky and Sobon called a female employee a “cunt” and a “useless bitch,” and Lebisky described the workplace as “nothing but a fucking sorority.” Lebisky is alleged to have told Hernandez repeatedly that her “tits look great” and to have told Heydorn she “could crush his head with her thighs.”²

The plaintiffs also describe specific incidents. In July 2022, Lebisky allegedly left men’s underwear in a common area with a note for Heydorn saying he “could not wait to see her.” In May 2021, he is said to have drawn devil horns and a mustache on a female employee’s photo and labeled it “Fatal Attraction.” In March 2022, he allegedly wrote an overweight employee’s name along with “Lift 5000” on a mechanical lift in a shared space.²

Pressure to Violate Funeral Industry Rules

The complaint also contains whistleblower allegations tied to Pennsylvania State Board of Funeral Directors rules. Sobon allegedly asked Polascak to cremate a body without required paperwork and screamed at her and threatened to fire her when she refused. He also allegedly directed her to hide the fact that a direct cremation package had been sold. Other plaintiffs say they were told to perform disinterments without proper permits and to falsify records about the identification and location of buried remains.² Iannacone and Heydorn say they refused similar instructions. Those refusals anchor the wrongful discharge claims.

Retaliation and Firings

The reports and terminations, according to the complaint, unfolded within weeks.

February 13, 2023: Polascak filed a formal sex discrimination complaint with Everstory’s HR.
Late February 2023: Sheehan, Heydorn, and Iannacone reported Sobon’s conduct to Regional General Manager Donald Underwood. Underwood is alleged to have then told Sobon about the complaints, contrary to company policy.
February 24, 2023: Polascak resigned after Sobon allegedly bombarded her with voicemails pressuring her to withdraw her complaint. The suit calls this a constructive discharge.
March 20, 2023: Sheehan, Heydorn, and Iannacone were suspended, ostensibly for accepting outside payments for pallbearing services. The plaintiffs say a male employee did the same and was not disciplined.
March 27, 2023: All three were formally terminated.
May 7, 2023: Hernandez complained of sex discrimination directly to Lebisky.
May 15, 2023: Hernandez was fired. The company allegedly cited, in part, “the language she used” in making her complaint.³

The plaintiffs say the same managers they had accused orchestrated the terminations, and that they were replaced by male employees. They point to that pattern as evidence the stated reasons were pretext.

Why Arbitration Was Blocked

Everstory tried first to move the case out of court. It argued that all five plaintiffs had signed valid arbitration agreements covering their claims. Judge John R. Padova agreed the agreements existed and covered the claims. He denied the motion anyway.

The reason was the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021, a federal law that lets employees bypass mandatory arbitration in cases involving sexual harassment. Applying the Rule 12(b)(6) plausibility standard, Judge Padova found the plaintiffs had alleged a “sexual harassment dispute” sufficient to trigger the statute. He described the underwear incident, the “Lift 5000” episode, and the pattern of sexualized comments as “humiliating and more than mere offensive utterances.” Because the harassment claims triggered the law, the court held the arbitration agreements unenforceable as to the entire amended complaint, not just the harassment counts.²

Why the Dismissal Motion Failed

Three months later, on December 23, 2025, Judge Padova denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss Counts I through VII. He reaffirmed that the four plaintiffs who had signed arbitration agreements stated plausible hostile work environment claims and held that Hernandez had done the same based on the repeated sexual comments directed at her.

On the disparate treatment claims, the court found that the allegations of female employees being fired while a similarly situated male escaped discipline created a plausible inference of discrimination. Judge Padova also held that Sobon could be individually liable under the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act for aiding and abetting the harassment and for intimidating Polascak into withdrawing her complaint.³

Where the Case Stands Now

The case is in discovery. On March 18, 2026, Judge Padova set an October 5, 2026 deadline for discovery, a March 1, 2027 deadline for dispositive motions, and a June 7, 2027 jury trial date. The plaintiffs filed a status report on settlement discussions on June 11, 2026, but no settlement has been announced. The company has denied the allegations and asserted affirmative defenses, including that the plaintiffs failed to mitigate their damages. Gregg L. Zeff and Eva Zelson represent the plaintiffs.¹

Sobon, named as an individual defendant, still appears on Everstory Partners’ website as a Senior Vice President of Operations.⁴

Other Everstory Litigation Worth Knowing About

Sheehan is not the only case involving Everstory or its properties, and readers researching the company may run across two others. In Virginia, Donald and Vickie Miller filed a lawsuit seeking more than $3 million over the burial of their son at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Chesapeake, alleging the cemetery promised burial in a “pristine” section called Revelation Garden but delivered a “decrepit, mud-torn, weed and trash-infested” site. The suit originally named StoneMor, reflecting the cemetery’s prior ownership.⁵

Before rebranding as Everstory in April 2023, the company operated as StoneMor. In December 2019, the SEC issued a cease-and-desist order against StoneMor Partners L.P. and its general partner for failing to disclose material liquidity problems and misstating financial results, finding that StoneMor had overstated limited partners’ capital by more than $10 million and understated revenue by roughly $30 million between 2013 and 2016. StoneMor GP paid a $250,000 penalty without admitting or denying the findings.⁶ These are separate matters from the Pennsylvania employment case and involve different plaintiffs, different claims, and, in the SEC matter, the predecessor company.

1
PACER Monitor. Sheehan et al v. Everstory Partners et al
2
CaseMine. Sheehan v. Everstory Partners, No. 24-6581 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 17, 2025)
3
CaseMine. Sheehan v. Everstory Partners, No. 24-6581 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 23, 2025)
4
Everstory Partners. About Everstory Partners
5
WAVY. Roosevelt Memorial Park Sued for $3M
6
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. StoneMor Partners L.P. Administrative Proceeding, File No. 3-19616