I'm seeing what I expect is the same thing; it's unexpectedly hitting an undefined value within the leafDataCells method in kendo.all.js. (approx. line 54677) Running version 2015.1.429. The problem is intermittently occurring when the grid is being rendered/defined. For us, it's users running IE8 which are encountering the issue most often.
I feel your pain about having a reproducible situation, unfortunately, I can't always get it to break on demand.
To me, it feels like a race condition, because sometimes it's working, and sometimes it's not, and when it's not working, it seems to stay not working for a while, but then resolves itself after a few refreshes of the whole page.