Evan is a Missouri resident and works for "Bedthug" as a landscaper. Bedthumb is a landscaping company based out of Chesterfield, Missouri. On a bright, freezing, cloudy day in February, Evan's supervisor directed Evan to go to Moody Park in Fairview Heights, Illinois. Once there, he was required to plant a row of trees along a property line between the park and some newly developed residential homes. The supervisor indicated somebody had professionally surveyed the property line a few days prior. The surveyors had marked the boundary line with large, three-foot-tall orange stakes Evan arrived at Moody Park and located the orange property line markers. He fired up his skid-steer and started to dig large holes in a reasonably indiscriminate manner. As Evan was digging the holes, a nearby homeowner, who Evan later learned was named Ashley, ran out her house's back door, and began frantically yelling and cursing at Evan. Evan turned off the skid-steer and got out of the cab to talk with Ashley. As he stood there and listened, he realized Ashley was furious that he was digging holes in her backyard and thought Evan was trespassing. Evan, confused by the raw display of anger and vitriol and being pretty sure that he was on park property, did not move. Instead, he yelled back to Ashley that he was on park property and that she was more than welcome to call the cops if she thought he was trespassing. Evan's comments caused Ashley to fly further into a rage. She rapidly approached Evan and came within 12 inches of him, without putting on a mask, and continued to scream that he needed to leave her property. Evan could feel the spit coming out of her mouth as she screamed at him. Evan, ordinarily pretty level-headed but worried about carrying COVID-19 back to his immune-compromised mother, became enraged. In a moment of anger, he picked up and swung a hammer at Ashley's head. Because Evan's action was unexpected, Ashley had no time to react, and the hammer hit her in the side of the head. The impact caused her to fall unconscious to the ground. At that moment, Ashley's husband came out the back door and saw Evan standing over Ashley's unconscious body. Ashley's husband, Dan, immediately ran to his wife's side. Upon seeing Dan run out, Evan shouted out, "it was an accident; I did not mean to put anyone in fear or hurt anyone!" Evan then ran to his company SUV, parked by the skid-steer, and left the scene at high speeds. As Dan sat by Ashley and consoled her, the police and paramedics arrived and took Ashley to the hospital. While that was happening, the police searched for Evan. However they were never able to locate Evan. Ashley was released from the hospital after having surgery. A few weeks after the surgery, the hospital handed Ashley a bill for $168,000 for her medical care because she did not have health insurance. Ashley eventually hired an attorney and filed a civil lawsuit against Bedthugk in Saint Clair County, Illinois Circuit Court. In her civil case, she alleges that Evan trespassed on her land, damaged her land, and committing assault and battery on her person, causing extensive injury. Ashley is demanding that Bedthug pay her $168,000 for the hospital bills, all legal fees, $1 1,000 to fix her property, $75,000 for future medical expenses and lost wages, and $50,000 in punitive damages for failing to supervise Evan properly. The trial is over, and Ashley wins. Bedibumb's insurance company covers all of the damages and cuts Ashley a $340,000 check. Ashley deposits the check into her checking account and, after some negotiation, pays off her hospital bill. She decides to treat herself by going out and buying a new truck. Dan argues that Ashley should not be going to a car dealership because Ashley is still taking large doses of narcotic pain medication to treat her head injury's residual pain. Dan points out the narcotic pain medication also has the side effect of causing Ashley to make bad decisions. Ashley decides to go anyways and demands that Dan stay home as she is more than capable of handling the transaction herself. At the car dealership, Ashley tells the salesperson she wants to buy a specific yellow Ford F-150 and is willing to pay $40,000, financed with a 0% interest loan. The salesperson verbally agrees to the deal and begins generating paperwork. After finishing the paperwork, the salesperson presents it to Ashley for signature. As Ashley is signing the paperwork, the salesperson tells Ashley all the paperwork reflects the $40,000 price. He also tells her that she should not worry about reading all the fine print on the various forms. Ashley, a bit dizzy due to the medication, trusts the salesperson. She proceeds to sign the paperwork without reading anything other than the front page. Ashley drives off with her new truck. When she gets her first bill in the mail, she notices that the truck's final sales price was $41,250. She gets her paperwork out and finds that the purchase price is listed at $41,250 on each of the documents she signed, except the front page. The dealer had honored the $40,000 purchase price, but on page 2, the dealer added $1,250 of dealer add-ons such as paint protection and lifetime car washes. Being very upset but not recalling everything that happened, Ashley attempted to return the truck to the dealer or otherwise get the dealer to honor the $40,000 price. The dealer refuses and says the written documents control over any verbal agreement. Ashley ultimately resolves the issue with the car dealership through arbitration. Deciding she wants a new start in life, and with a bit of surplus cash sitting in her checking account, Ashley decides to move to Minneapolis to take a new job at Tar-mart's corporate headquarters. Tar-mart is an American company and its stock trades on a U.S. stock exchange. Ashley's first major assignment as part of her new job is to evaluate a case dealing with the question of whether Tar-mart's activities in Canada might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Specifically, evidence indicates that one of Tar-mart's purchasing agents in Canada helped establish a Tar-mart warehouse in a Canadian municipality. Tar-mart was building the warehouse to compete more effectively for a lucrative Canadian maple syrup distribution contract. Tar-mart's purchasing agent, through a Canadian intermediary, paid: $521 to the municipalities permit clerk in the clerk's personal capacity to help expedite the permit application and processing, $321 to the permit clerk's brother for foreign language translation support (as Canada requires everything to be in French and English), $1198 to the municipality for the actual permit application, and $219 to a public notary (who happens to be the permit clerk's sister) for certified copies of the final permit. Also, the purchasing agent authorized a payment of $1 1,854 to the municipality's mayor and critical allies to ensure Tar-mart's permit would be approved and so that a competitor's permit would be denied. By doing this, it appears Tar-mart could derail the competitor's entry into the local market. The purchasing agent recorded all of these payments and reported them back to Tar-mart's corporate headquarters. The corporate office accountants labeled all of these payments as normal and proper business expenses that could be deducted from Tar-mart's income tax obligations but flagged them for further compliance review. Ashley now has the case to conduct a compliance review. After some internal investigation, it turns out that the FCPA problem is more significant than just one payment. Tar-mart launched an extensive corporate investigation, which revealed several members of the Board of Directors and the CEO had authorized tens of millions of dollars in bribes to various Canadian political leaders. During the investigation, the FBI was called to assist in the investigation. The FBI interviewed the Board members and the CEO, and determined the CEO had: worked with the Board members to plan out the bribery scheme, authorized the payments personally, and was aware the payments were linked to the bribery scheme. The FBI also determined the CEO lied when he provided his official interview with the FBI. The FBI ultimately decline to arrest the executives but instead follow through with the civil fraud charges. Tar-mart's external independent directors appoint a new interim board of directors and CEO. After the civil fraud charges, the company's forensic audit revealed that the CEO and board members had engaged in numerous similar costly schemes. Part of one of the schemes involved inflating Tar-mart's earnings, as stated on Tar-mart's quarterly and annual reports filed with the SEC. By inflating these numbers, the executives reaped millions of dollars in extra bonuses. Once the total damage was known, Tar-mart had to restate earnings for five years, showing that in the 2014 to 2019 time period, Tar-mart was 18% less profitable overall than the market believed. When the news of this situation hit, Tar-mart's publicly traded stock immediately dropped 15% in value overnight and ended 2020 down 27% overall. News commentators blamed the restated earnings and executive scandals as the reason for this drop. A group of shareholders sued Tar-mart for failing to report previous payments of bribes to Canadian politicians. Their lawsuit stated they had relied on Tar-mart's earlier filings with the SEC when purchasing Tar-mart's listed securities. The shareholders argued that because of the situation, they had collectively lost millions of dollars Ashley quickly grew tired of Tar-mart and decided to go back to school to become a mechanic. After school, she landed a job at her local Firestone Auto Repair shop where she was the only female employee among more than 25 male employees. The male employees did not like Ashley from day 1 and throughout the course of several months, called her derogatory names that referenced her gender as female, her age (61), and her religious affiliation as a Mormon. Some of the more polite names included calling her an "old grey mare" and asking when she was going to go on Social Security. Regarding her gender, they stated women were not cut out for a man's job, she did not have what it takes to be a mechanic because she was female and therefore not physically or mentally strong enough to do the job. Several also stated she should be at home taking care of her husband instead of being in the workplace. As to her being a Mormon, the male mechanics made many crude references to her religion and stated they were uncomfortable because they don't trust Mormon's or anyone that does not follow mainline protestant type Christianity. Ashley took the abuse for a few months and even asked them to stop on multiple occasions. Over time, the abuse took a serious toll on Ashley's mental health and she dreaded coming to work each day. Eventually, Ashley called a corporate hotline that was provided to employees, as part of the employee handbook, and reported the problems in the workplace. A few days after making the call, Ashley's manager began to write her up for small workplace issues such as misplacing a socket wrench or failing to fully bleed out compressor air lines, despite the fact that her male colleagues regularly made these same minor mistakes and were not written up. After multiple write-ups, Ashley's manager pulled her aside and said because of all of the writeups he was placing Ashley on suspension without pay. Because of the suspension, and Ashley's need to pay her student loans, she quit the job