> If only one parent had sued, we wouldn't be batting an eyelash at the resulting damages.
This is not really a convincing response to my comment on the per-family damages:
>> Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.
You can't lose value you never had.
> How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years?
However disruptive it was, the damages could not reach $100 million unless you either (a) spent $100 million dealing with the disruption, or (b) forwent $100 million of earnings in order to deal with the disruption. (Or any combination.) Again, that hasn't happened. You can't deal $100 million of economic damage to someone who doesn't possess assets worth $100 million. That is a major reason for the concept of punitive damages.
"You can't lose value you never had" isn't a coherent argument. People are routinely awarded damages far greater than their net worths for all sorts of torts. By the logic you're using, if I go to Starbucks and steal the eyeballs out of the barista, I'm only asymptotically on the hook for a lifetime's worth of barista earnings.
I think you'd find --- criminal liability aside --- that you'd be on the hook for more than the lifetime earnings of a Starbucks barista and the cost of medical care and a seeing eye dog.
This is not really a convincing response to my comment on the per-family damages:
>> Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.
You can't lose value you never had.
> How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years?
However disruptive it was, the damages could not reach $100 million unless you either (a) spent $100 million dealing with the disruption, or (b) forwent $100 million of earnings in order to deal with the disruption. (Or any combination.) Again, that hasn't happened. You can't deal $100 million of economic damage to someone who doesn't possess assets worth $100 million. That is a major reason for the concept of punitive damages.