content: Those amounts aren't what they seem.  First off, they include attorney's fees for years of trial litigation, which @ $400/hr is a lot of money.  Second, the punitive portion is usually based on the amount of money the company stood to gain by doing what they supposedly should not have been doing.  For example, in the famous McDonald's hot coffee case, the multimillion dollar penalty wasn't because the jury felt the lady deserved millions of dollars.  It was the amount of money McDonald's made, on the day she was burned, on the coffee that they sold at a different temperature to senior citizens.  The woman just happened to be lucky it was such a large amount.  The intention of the penalty is not to reward the plaintiff; it's to punish the defendant enough to discourage further illicit behavior.  If a company makes 30 million dollars a day breaking the law, they won't care if the penalty they need to pay to people who sue them over it is $1000.  They'll just pay those people what amounts to corporate as a paltry sum, and nothing will change.  If they get a penalty that hits the bottom line, they can't just pay people to go away.  They have to make changes.