If you follow the trial at all, you'll see that this was not just "he said a bad thing one time and people are mad at him." He has a strongly demonstrated pattern of lies, perjury, obstruction of the legal process, and encouraging harassment against the Sandy Hook families. Most of the people saying "everyone should be afraid of this" are arguing in bad faith.
but absolutely none of that, save the encouragement of harassment, has any bearing on what the victims suffered from the behavior the lawsuit is fundamentally about. These damages are, supposedly, compensatory, and so the only relevant factor is supposed to be what the victims actually suffered.
Forgive me for wondering whether an account created 27 minutes ago is arguing in good faith on a topic that frequently gets brigaded by FUD trolling. An actual lawyer will have to weigh in on whether this fits the damages awarded in similar cases.
I think the point here is that it doesn't really matter whether the lawyers call it "compensatory" or not. Many legal terms don't really mean what it says on the tin. But we're talking here from a common-sense perspective: is the intent behind this fine, however it is described, to compensate for actual damages suffered, or to punish the conduct? And for it to be the former, it has to be in line with actual damages.
A defendant has a right to trial by jury. The consequence of exercising that right is trial by a jury.
In some venues, "unfair" (quotes here because reasonable people can dispute how "fair" is to be assessed in a circumstance such as this) damages rulings are back-stopped by statutory maxima. I don't know Connecticut law, but that appears not to be the case here.
