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Society in what sense, like some government related coffer that goes to the education of America's youth or some crap like that?

Frankly, I don't see any reason why punitive damages shouldn't go to the victim who was injured.

If you cap awards at actual damages or put punitive damages in some sort of slush fund, you are again punishing the victim. Attorneys have to get paid, and a case on contingency is 1/3 of a judgment. If an award is limited to actual damages, the injured party only receives 66.666% of his *actual* damages. Even if you want to argue that 1/3 is too much for compensation, the fact is that actual damages don't make a victim whole--they still come out the loser because of the costs of a trial. The law prevents juries to calculate attorneys fees when calculating damages.

In the end, punitive damages (which are rarely awarded, I might add), help fill that gap between what isn't provided by actual damages and what the actual costs to the victim are. The rest of the punitive damages is just a way of saying to the victim, "gee, you really got screwed. Here's a little something extra just to show how really sorry we are." I don't have a problem with that.

A standard list of disqualifications? I don't see how anything like that can be standardized; that just doesn't make sense. Each case is different and presents different little twists and turns that need to be evaluated as they arrive. As far as best educated people on the jury, those are the people that tend to think they know everything and are close minded; I sure don't want people like that serving on a jury. Sort of defeats the purpose of a fair trial. Besides that, it creates a bias in the jury room; the least educated people are more likely to agree with the most educated people, and there is again a problem with that whole fair trial thing.

In this utopia of necessary and worthwhile litigation you describe, how are those heroic malpractice lawyers going to eat if you put the docs out of the business of paying premiums? Your golden goose won't be putting out the eggs much longer. Drive carefully. If there are no surgeons, surviving even a moderately injurious accident will be tricky. Arguments suture no lacerations.