Business Law and the Legal Environment 7th Edition by Jeffrey Beatty,Susan Samuelson

Exercise 15

With a national debt in the trillions, people are desensitized to "mere" billions. Stop for a moment and consider $1 billion. If you had that sum, invested it conservatively, and got a 5 percent return, you could spend roughly $1 million a week for the rest of your life without reducing your principal.
This chapter described three lawsuits with jackpot punitive damage awards. The jury award was $10 billion in Texaco v. Pennzoil, $5 billion in the Exxon Valdez case, and $3 billion in Boeken v. Philip Morris. Is there any point at which the raw number of dollars awarded is just too large? Was the original jury award excessive in any of these cases? If so, which one(s)?