I bet the jurors are selected for their ignorance of any previous settlements, and da judge forbids enlightening them.
It's not inconceivable that each jury thinks they are hearing the only case the poor bereaved family that has any chance of making the eeeeeevil capitalists pay.
I still think a jury may be reluctant to make a huge award simply on order to enrich the plaintiffs beyond reason, depending on composition of the jury pool.
The exception would be a very strongly worded instruction for punitive damages that asks the jury to take into account the size of the defendant corporations and the amounts necessary to “punish” them. For that to happen, however, there would need be near criminal conduct, and the only defendant charged criminally has just settled for precisely that reason.
Altogether, that may explain why the remaining defendants will hang tough, unless some new damaging evidence surfaces.
Here’s a well-written Globe article on the topic.
Excerpts:
Punitive damages in the hundreds of millions would be unprecedented in Massachusetts, where large jury awards are rare. In one of the biggest cases ever, a Suffolk County jury in 2000 awarded $27.5 million to the estate of a Russian immigrant who suffocated beneath a Green Line trolley as an MBTA rescue effort disintegrated into “a tragedy of errors.” A judge later reduced the penalty to $1 million, arguing that the MBTA was only careless and did not intend to harm the man.
“There haven’t been large punitive damage awards in Massachusetts,” said Andrew C. Meyer Jr., a leading malpractice lawyer in Boston.
However, he said, that could change if a lawyer can make a convincing enough case. “In a wrongful death case, if one is capable of proving gross negligence, the jury is entitled to award punitive damages, which are measured by the amount of money necessary to cause harm [to] — in fact, punish — the defendants.”
The [plaintiff’s] lawyers predicted juries would offer landmark punitive damages if the case is not settled, comparing the case to other lawsuits over wrongful deaths in which juries have awarded at least $98 million in recent years and as much as $450 million.
Outside lawyers said the Del Valle family may have a hard time persuading a jury or a judge to match those figures. They said that the US Supreme Court in recent years has tried to rein in large punitive damages cases by arguing that, in most cases, the punishment should not be more than nine times larger than the actual losses.
If the family gets $10 million for actual losses, that would suggest punitive damages of not more than $90 million.
However, the Del Valle lawyers argue that the limit on punitive damages is not strict and that the punishment has to be enormous for the companies involved to suffer significant pain: Bechtel Co., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, reported revenue of $20.5 billion last year, its fourth straight record year. The joint venture of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff estimates it made $140 million to $160 million in profit on the Big Dig.
“One can only imagine the potential future harm that can occur if we as a society do not send a clear unwavering message that corporate profit cannot come at the expense of human life,” they wrote.