Why are there 'damages' in cases where there is no damage done? Just as an example, a bakery in Oregon had to pay $130,000 in damages to a couple who they refused to sell a wedding cake to. http://www.statesmanjournal.com/sto...akery-owners-gay-wedding-cake-case/985096001/ My question is, what damage was done which equalled 1 cent, let alone $130,000? Even in cases where there is actual damage, people end up getting hundreds of millions of dollars even though medical bills arising from the damage wouldn't likely add up to the pay out and even though there is no reason why the person isn't able to work. Obviously if the damage is that someone can never work again, then the pay out will be at least partly all of the money that the person is projected to have made over the course of their working life. And even in some of these cases, you just know that the person would never have been able to make that amount of money in their working life.
Because the tort system in the U.S. is messed up. In many cases it's all about emotion. The lawyer twists words & facts to make the defendant look as bad as possible. Of course not surprisingly, this drives the costs of liability insurance sky high. Basically the court system has been turned into a Lotto. 9 out of 10 persons who were wronged will never receive compensation, or will receive much less than what adequate compensation would have been. For the few lucky plaintiffs, it will be like winning the Lotto.
It sounds as if you're saying that the 1 out of 10 times where compensation occurs, it is either ridiculously, unjustly low or ridiculously, unjustly high.
I'm saying the few cases where it is unjustly high is probably enough money to pay out everyone else what they deserve but didn't get. In other words, the issue isn't that the tort system is paying out too much or too little money. It's that it's paying out most of the money to a small number of the people.
Yes. But to understand it you'd have to understand how the whole legal system operates in practice (not just talking about what the actual law says). That would be too complicated for me to do here. One very short answer (and only a small part of the answer) is that judges are not experts on the subject matter in every case and don't have the time to closely examine every detail or be able to think about it long enough to always make rational decisions.
What happened to that judge after the damage award? When you answer that question, you will see why it didn't have to make logical sense.
The story didn't say anything about what happened to the judge. I'm guessing that he or she just continued to be a judge. Why, did something happen that you know of?
As in, judges are untouchable, which means they can often rule however they like regardless of it not making logical sense?
