You probably don't want my opinion on this, but here it is anyway. There shouldn't be any punative damages unless laws were broken and can be proven broken beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of criminal law. Civil court damages really ought to be based on restitution only. If something isn't right, it simply ought to be made illegal by the elected legislature, not by the unelected court system.
I don't disagree. Frankly, I think executives of large corporations should be held criminally responsible for the misdeeds of their employees in the interests of the corporation.
We all know that almost never happens now, so the primary effect of getting rid of punitive damages would be to remove all disincentive for corporations to misbehave. The end result of that would probably be more regulation, micro-management by government oversight.
Punitive damages, with all their drawbacks, are certainly preferable to that, IMHO.
I've had a case where the amount needed to repair fire damage properly was $20k. The adjuster was going to offer them $10k. He looked me in the eye and said, "They're old, black and poor. What are they going to do about it?" The answer was they accepted the 10 grand.
This behavior did not put money in the pocket of the adjuster. It put $10k on the bottom line for the insurance company. It was immoral, unethical and possibly illegal. But you can't put a corporation in jail.
If a corporation has strong financial incentives to behave badly, it needs at least some financial counter-incentive to avoid such behavior. Punitive damages, for all their faults, provide that counter-incentive. (Well, sometimes they do.) :)