this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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-11
No one single person deserves millions for winning suits (piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago by Jaegeras@piefed.social to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world
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Read a news article, by headline because really I don't care enough to be bothered reading why. About a mother, who was denied home-at-work and had a child die over some circumstance, was awarded $22 million. Whether she gets it or not, doesn't matter, what matters is that nobody should ever win that much in any case. Millions have been tossed around so fruitlessly in cases like these.

Should that mom deserve some form of compensation? Yeah, probably, but not millions. It doesn't bring back the the child, in fact, money never really heals these kinds of wounds. If so, why isn't anyone getting some of that money anyways?

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The reasons for high dollar amount compensations are usually, at least, threefold:

  1. Cover the plaintiff's legal fees. Lawyers often get a percentage of the award or settlement and typically are the ones to set the dollar amount being sought. Even if they "just" bill hourly then the plaintiff still has to pay them (win or lose). Often, though not always, lawyers are expensive (especially good ones).
  2. Actual compensation to the victim
  3. A deterrent to future violations that led to the lawsuit / encouragement to do better

Edit: That's against companies and large entities, though. I've never understood awards of millions of dollars from regular people who could never in 10 lifetimes pay that amount. Maybe it's just symbolic? I've never really known what happens when Jim Bob who makes $1000/mo on social security gets sued for $10 million and loses.