There has been an alarming increase in fantasizing and debasing citizens that receive vastly excessive (supposedly) compensatory & punitive court awards. In these (fantasy) cases, the judgment always involves ordinary people who win a court judgment. Note I say excessive amounts, fantasy, and ordinary people who win (as in justice) a court decision.

Lets keep a perspective between fantasy and reality. How many people do you actually know who receive and keep a multi-million dollar award, based solely upon a simple and 'minor' grievance. At the same time, how many times have you heard of friends who lose salary-leisure time, cost of lawyer, court docket delays-extensions, and then after (possibly) winning, were never able to collect full or any part of the court award.

Think about the fantasy cases you are bombarded with. A woman is given a multi-million dollar court settlement, this was the award for hot coffee served by McDonalds which she spilled onto her lap. Other women take a manufacturer of silicone breast-implant to court and win big money. In real life these fantasy awards were challenged through additional courts (as in these two cases), after which the real winners turned out to be the lawyers, in both cases the original court awards ended up being vastly downgraded. The horror story everyone is familiar with regarding Industrial Polution is the 'Love Canal' that required many years before justice was accomplished, few are aware some died and did not see a penny they were awarded by the court.

A similar example is the excessive award for a one inch dent in an auto bumper, this was a big point made in a radio talk show. It was a case of an expensive auto being shipped from over seas, the owner discovered at arrival a dent in a bumper. No one asked why such a small matter had to go to court to be resolved, yet the owner was taken to task for wanting recompense in excess of repair cost. Does this have a familiar ring, such as the auto manufacturer with design problems in fuel line and gas tank very close to exhaust pipes, the result was numerous and fiery deaths before being stopped by long drawn out court battles. The manufacturer finally being forced to re engineer this design fault, ending the much cheaper resolution employed, the cheaper method was paying off the few successful court awards for wrongful death.

Other than required guilty or not guilty decisions from juries, it is doubtful that these jurists have much to do with these fantasy awards. Corporate Lawyers and judges are more probably the stupid culprits, and in my paranoid opinion neither are stupid. It is more probable that if the Silent Majority can be convinced that fantasy is real, it will then enable downgrading all compensatory and punitive awards into the bargain basement. It may also enable new laws that drastically reduce punitive awards, permitting continuation of present (small) wrongful death awards, cheaper than correcting the cause of wrongful death. It may permit laws which keep citizens from forming single (affordable) class-action litigation against giant corporations who have unlimited lawyers and funds. It could enable these unscrupulous corporations to effectively fight and win (for thirty years or more) cases in which individuals cannot prove within their lifetimes that these products such as cigarettes and asbestos are harmful to both adults and children.

No doubt small businesses (quickly becoming a minority) and big business make honest mistakes, these cases require honest and fair consideration. But for (bottom line profit) greed and deliberate carelessness, effective punitive measures are needed. This does not mean that fair and punitive awards should totally go to individuals (and especially their lawyers). State and Federal agencies who are supposed to be effective deterrent of corporate abuses may be the best recipients to part of these punitive awards. Who knows, Perk, PAC, and Payola might not be needed as often if this were the case? Conversely, if proven that a lawyer and/or client conspires with false claims for an award, not only should there be compensatory but punitive damages levied against them.

Listen carefully people, you can fool some of the people some of the time and with the right laws... let the buyer beware, because justice is blind, gutted, and brainless.

By the way as an aside comment, in my travels I have had experience on occasions of food servers especially early morning and their (very) hot coffee. I am not talking about 1st or 2nd, but 3rd degree burning coffee as referred to above. After a smallest of precautionary sips, the tip of my tongue was so severely irritated (burned), that I had to endure this distracting pain much of the remaining day. It is quite evident when coffee is routinely served in this manner, that a difference exists between single accident in preparation, and continuous plus intentional scorching for every atom of caffeine from a coffee bean.

Compare actual fact that you and your friends experience or discover against these fables, because you are very likely to discover the fable was greatly reduced to the fact which it turned out to be. As suggested by a news reporter whose TV show once exposed con and lies pulled daily on the general public, "if it sounds to good to be true, chances are that it is to good to be true".