Thompson and Sons Lawsuit: Overtime Claims, State Ban, Bankruptcy

The Thompson and Sons lawsuit most closely tied to that search is Hubbard v. Thompson & Sons Moving and Storage, Inc., a federal wage-and-hour class action filed in May 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. A former mover accused the Boca Raton company of misclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid paying overtime, and named the company along with its two owners, Shawn Thompson and Marcen Morris, as defendants.¹

What the Class Action Alleged

The case, docketed as 9:17-cv-80546-RLR, was filed on May 2, 2017, by William Hubbard, who had worked for Thompson & Sons from roughly September 2016 through mid-January 2017. According to the complaint, Hubbard regularly worked between 50 and 70 hours per week at a flat rate of $12.00 per hour. He received no time-and-a-half premium for hours over 40, which the suit alleged violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.¹

The complaint went further than unpaid overtime. Hubbard alleged the company never paid him at all for roughly 94.5 hours worked between December 2016 and January 2017. It also brought a tax fraud claim under 26 U.S.C. § 7434, alleging that the defendants issued Hubbard a Form 1099 reporting $5,640 in 2016 income rather than a W-2. That treatment, the complaint said, let the company skip required tax withholdings and push the full tax burden onto the worker, a common consequence of misclassifying employees as contractors.¹

Hubbard sought to represent a class of all current and former non-exempt employees who had worked for Thompson & Sons in any week between May 2014 and the filing date without receiving proper overtime pay for hours over 40.¹

Who Was Sued

The complaint named three defendants: Thompson & Sons Moving and Storage, Inc., along with Shawn Thompson and Marcen Morris in their individual capacities. Both men were alleged to have owned, managed, and operated the business and to have qualified as “employers” under the FLSA, controlling hiring, firing, pay rates, hour tracking, and company finances.¹

The company was headquartered at 1746 Avenida Del Sol in Boca Raton and ran additional locations in Orlando, Brooklyn, and Sayreville, New Jersey, offering packing and moving services across South Florida, the New York–New Jersey area, and New England. Morris served as registered agent. The complaint alleged annual gross sales above $500,000 in 2016 and 2017, clearing the threshold for FLSA coverage.¹

Shawn Thompson’s Later Legal Troubles

The 2017 case was one piece of a much longer pattern of complaints and court actions involving Shawn Thompson’s moving operations. Thompson later ran a network of business names beyond Thompson & Sons, including Thompson Nation Holdings, Small Move Movers, Moving Giants, One Man One Van, All Stars Moving and Storage, and Next Door Relocation. The Miami Herald reported that at least 18 active companies were tied to Thompson, with addresses ranging from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando.²

Customers repeatedly accused Thompson of a bait-and-switch pattern: quoting a low price, raising the charges on moving day, and holding belongings until the higher amount was paid.²

A Miami-Dade County judge found Thompson personally liable for deceptive and unfair trade practices, fraud, and misrepresentation over a July 2022 move for a customer named Nicolette Gonzalez. In September 2025, Florida’s District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s summary judgment and a permanent injunction against Thompson and his entities, finding that he was a “direct participant in the improper dealings” and that he had testified in a deposition that he personally made all business decisions for his corporate entities.³ A separate Orange County case brought by customer Scott Meyer produced a $60,150 default judgment, and Thompson faced contempt proceedings for avoiding court-ordered financial disclosures in that matter.⁴

State Ban and Bankruptcy

In November 2025, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services fined Thompson $110,000 for 22 violations of state moving statutes and permanently banned him and any company he owns from operating as a mover in Florida.⁴ The Department’s authority over movers is limited to cease-and-desist orders and fines of up to $5,000 per violation, so the permanent ban was the harshest sanction available.²

Thompson filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in West Palm Beach federal court on January 26, 2026. It was not his first. He and Morris had filed a Chapter 13 case in September 2019 that was dismissed in February 2020 after they failed to make payments. At the time of the 2026 filing, Thompson faced potential attorney fee obligations of $242,895.25 from the Gonzalez case alone, on top of the $60,150 Orange County judgment and the $110,000 state fine.⁴

1
ClassAction.org. Hubbard v. Thompson and Sons Moving and Storage
2
Miami Herald. Shawn Thompson Moving Companies Investigation
3
FindLaw. Thompson Nation Holdings LLC v. Gonzalez
4
Miami Herald. Shawn Thompson Moving Business Legal Actions