At first blush the stem reads a bit like a Pseudo Sufficient Assumption question, with all its talk of illustrating principles and such. But it’s just a Parallel question: the argument in the stimulus makes a judgment that illustrates a principle, and the answer choices will also make judgments that (presumably) illustrate principles.

So our job is to read the stimulus and extract the abstract principle behind the judgment, then look for the answer choice in which the judgment relies on that same abstract principle.

Get ready for a preview of your 1L Criminal Law class! The principle at play here is known by lawyers as the “fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.” Under Fourth Amendment law, if evidence of a crime was obtained illegally (e.g., through a warrantless wiretap), that evidence is inadmissible in court. If the method used to obtain the evidence (i.e. the tree) is tainted, any evidence obtained using that method (i.e. the fruit) is also tainted.

Our stimulus establishes that the company obtained damning evidence of Ellison’s guilt via illegal means, and concludes that the company cannot justifiably punish him.

We’re looking for answers that tell a similar story – we know someone is definitely guilty of wrongdoing, but we only know that because of our own improper behavior, so we can’t punish them.

Spoiler alert: the wrong answer choices in this question mostly fail to match the improper means piece. It can’t just be that improper stuff was going on at some point – the improper behavior must be the method used to obtain the evidence.