In July, Ford fired 11-year Kentucky Truck Plant electrician Kurt Kromm over accusations that he’d stolen a $1.95 pack of cookies from a self-checkout snack kiosk, despite bank records showing he’d actually paid for it. As we covered when the saga first broke, Kromm was marched off the job and publicly branded a thief before anyone checked the payment records that proved him right.
Now the story has taken a legal turn. According to original reporting from journalist Phoebe Wall Howard’s Shifting Gears newsletter, Kromm has retained attorney J. Will Huber, a defamation specialist based in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, and is preparing to pursue claims against both Ford and Aramark, the contractor that runs the plant’s snack kiosks and surveillance system.
Kromm, 60, spent 11 years at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville earning more than $200,000 a year before he was let go. Ford eventually offered to bring him back after he produced notarized bank records showing the cookie purchase went through at 3:38 a.m. on May 9, hours before Aramark ever flagged the transaction to Ford or the UAW. Kromm turned the offer down and had already taken another job instead.
His attorney argues that a belated rehire offer doesn’t erase the damage already done. Under Kentucky law, falsely accusing a worker of theft counts as defamation per se, meaning the harm to someone’s reputation is presumed rather than something Kromm has to separately prove in court. Kromm put it simply: “You can’t call somebody a criminal if they’re not a criminal.”
Ford has declined to address the case directly, saying only that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation while it reviews isolated kiosk problems. Aramark gave a similarly brief statement, saying it is looking into the situation without addressing Kromm’s legal move specifically.
The case is drawing attention beyond Kromm because it isn’t an isolated incident. The UAW is also reviewing a similar firing at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant, where assembly worker Nick Nabozny was let go this spring over accusations tied to a bag of Doritos and a pack of Ritz crackers rung up through the same kind of Aramark kiosk system. Workers at multiple plants have complained for years that the machines glitch, freeze mid-transaction, or fail to print receipts, leaving employees unaware a payment didn’t register until they’re accused of theft.
As more workplace transactions run through automated kiosks and surveillance systems, Kromm’s case could become an early test of how much legal responsibility a company bears when a machine’s error costs someone their job and their reputation, not just a paycheck. For the full details on the legal strategy and the companies’ statements, the original reporting is available at Shifting Gears.