Six clean years, one firing - and younger coworkers she says walked away untouched
A 60-year-old former U.S. Bank employee says she was singled out and fired over a fraudulent check, while younger coworkers who did the same thing kept their jobs.
Judith Knipp filed an age discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Bank National Association in the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on May 14, 2026. The case rests on a single claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the federal law protecting workers 40 and older.
Knipp joined U.S. Bank in July 2018 as a Client Relationship Consultant 3 at the Potter Village branch in Fremont, Ohio. According to the complaint, she worked there for six years without a single discipline or performance issue.
That run ended in January 2024. Her manager, Trisha Pollzzie, told her she had allegedly cashed a fraudulent $4,500 check the previous August, the filing says. Knipp says she was not given any documentation. According to the complaint, Pollzzie initially told her not to worry, noting that other employees had made similar errors on the same customer account - an account the bank ultimately charged off for $16,000.
The complaint alleges that a string of fraudulent $4,500 checks had been hitting branches across Knipp's district, all under District Manager Chrissy Kolakowski. The pattern, according to the filing, started at the Port Clinton branch, where a Client Relationship Consultant described as approximately 30 years old, Dennis Trendel, made a similar override - or allowed one - after getting authorization from his supervisor, Tara Grodi.
On Feb. 7, 2024, Knipp was fired. She was told only that she was being discharged for overriding a transaction alert, the complaint says. The bank did not call the conduct fraud or misconduct at the time, did not give her an investigative report or audit finding, and did not follow any progressive discipline process, according to the filing.
Then comes the part HR readers will notice. The complaint alleges the termination decision was made by Kolakowski "in consultation with U.S. Bank's Human Resources Advisory Services," and delivered by Pollzzie. Knipp says she was the only employee fired. According to the complaint, substantially younger employees in her district who engaged in materially similar conduct - including the override tied to a similar fraudulent check - are still employed.
Knipp also alleges that overriding transaction alerts was common at the Potter Village branch, and that no other employee there, all substantially younger than her, was fired for it. The complaint argues the bank's stated reason for the firing is pretextual, pointing to what it describes as a shifting account of her conduct, the retention of younger comparators, and a departure from standard investigative and disciplinary procedures.
Knipp dual-filed a charge with the EEOC (Charge No. 471-2024-04566) and received a Notice of Right to Sue on Feb. 13, 2026. She is seeking back pay, front pay or reinstatement, compensatory and liquidated damages, an injunction, and attorney's fees. She has demanded a jury trial.
For HR leaders, the case is a clean illustration of how three things drive defensibility in a termination - consistency across comparators, documentation contemporaneous with the decision, and adherence to the company's own disciplinary process. When an employee is in a protected age group, has a long clean record, and is the only one fired out of a group accused of similar conduct, each of those three becomes a battleground.
The express reference to HR Advisory Services in the decision chain is the other piece worth flagging. Plaintiffs in ADEA cases routinely ask who made the call and what HR's role was. Here, that question is built into the complaint itself.
The allegations have not been tested in court. U.S. Bank has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled on the claims.
