With a national debt in the trillions, people are desensitized to “mere” billions. Stop for a moment and consider$1 billion dollars. If you had that sum, invested it conservatively, and got a 5% return, you could spend roughly $1 million dollars a week for the rest of your life without reducing your principal.
This chapter described three lawsuits with jackpot punitive damages awards. The jury award was $10 billion in Texaco v. Pennzoil, $5 billion in the Exxon Valdez case and $3 billion in Boeken v. Philip Morris. Is there any point at which the raw number of dollars awarded is just too large? Was the original jury award excessive in any of these cases? If so, which one(s)?
