The way the civil lawsuit thing is supposed to work is that people hurt by negligent actions get compensated for what it cost them, and then also receive punitive damages--money intended to discourage the defendant from doing the same thing to other people.
Once in a while there is a case with a large plaintiff award that seems to be absolutely outrageous. The archetypal case is the old lady who spilled McDonald's coffee on herself, and got awarded a zillion dollars.
Except the tort system in this case worked.
There's a movie.
It turns out she really was badly hurt, and she didn't get a zillion dollars. Most importantly, the punitive damages led McDonald's to stop serving scaldingly hot coffee.
That's how it's supposed to work.