🗞️ No Answer, No Argument: Florida Diner Chain Loses Labor Case by Default

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered the operator of a Keke's Breakfast Café location in Boynton Beach, Florida, to reinstate and compensate a former server who says he was fired for complaining that managers were waiting on tables, cutting into staff tip earnings. The ruling did not follow a trial. It followed the company's decision, whether deliberate or not, never to respond to the government's complaint at all.

Server Sean Power filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board in January 2025. He alleged that after he raised concerns with coworkers in late October 2024, and then reported the practice to corporate management days later, he was pulled from the schedule and terminated in November 2024. The agency's general counsel issued a formal complaint in March 2026. Under the Board's rules, a company that receives such a complaint must file an answer within 14 days or risk having every allegation treated as true.

Everglades Partners LLC, the entity behind the restaurant, which appears to have proceeded without a lawyer, missed that deadline along with several subsequent extensions and warnings from the regional office. When no answer arrived, the general counsel asked the Board for default judgment. The Board granted the motion on July 23, 2026, noting that operating without counsel does not by itself excuse a company from responding to a federal complaint.

With the allegations deemed admitted, the Board found that the company violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act by retaliating against Power for engaging in what the law calls protected concerted activity, coordinated action among employees over workplace conditions, in this case, tip income. The remedy includes reinstatement, back pay, and compensation for job search and interim employment costs under a standard the Board set in its 2022 Thryv decision, which expanded the scope of make whole relief and has drawn mixed treatment in the federal appeals courts since. Two of the three Board members who decided this case noted they still have reservations about that broader remedy but applied it, in their words, because no three member majority currently exists to overturn it.

Key Points

• Server Sean Power says he was fired days after flagging that managers serving tables was cutting into servers' tip earnings.
• Everglades Partners LLC, operator of a Keke's Breakfast Café location, never filed an answer to the NLRB complaint despite multiple deadline extensions and warnings.
• The Board treated all allegations as admitted and granted default judgment on July 23, 2026.
• The company must reinstate Power, pay back wages and other financial losses with interest, and post an employee-rights notice at the restaurant.
• The order also requires expunging discharge records and compensating Power for tax consequences of a lump-sum payout.
• Two Board members flagged unresolved legal questions around the expanded "Thryv" damages remedy but applied it in the absence of a majority to overturn it.

Primary Source Author: National Labor Relations Board (Chairman James R. Murphy, Members David M. Prouty and Scott A. Mayer)

Primary Source: Everglades Partners LLC d/b/a Keke's Breakfast Café and Sean Power, 375 NLRB No. 8, Case 12-CA-357963 (July 23, 2026)

Primary Source Link: www.nlrb.gov/case/12-CA-357963

Supplemental Links

• National Labor Relations Board
• NLRB Rules and Regulations, Part 102 (answer requirements and default judgment procedure)
• Thryv, Inc. remedy expansion explained, Holland & Knight
• Circuit court split over Thryv damages, Fredrikson & Byron
• Third Circuit limits NLRB damages authority in Starbucks case, Saul Ewing