[dragonwriter]

> Tort/civil lawsuits are about being "made whole."

Only at the “modelling a cow as a perfectly thermoconducting sphere” level of analysis.

Actual damages and preliminary injunctions to preserve a situation remediable by damages are about that, other parts of what happens in civil cases are often not. E.g., punitive damages are, as the name suggests, punitive, not compensatory.

[bumby]

I'm unsure I follow your "modeling as a cow" analogy. Usually, that's used to show the model does not adequately reflect reality. But that doesn't hold in tort cases. Compensatory damages are the majority, by a considerable margin. According to DOJ data[1]:

- Punitive damages were awarded in only 5% of trials where the plaintiff won

- It was lower for tort cases (3%) and higher for contract cases (8%)

- It is lower in product liability and medical cases (1% each)

Those findings show that the punitive damages awarded are both relatively rare and modest. A "spherical cow model" based on compensatory damages is probably still a very good model.

[1] https://www.centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-punitive-damages...