What damages theories (compensatory, punitive, disgorgement) could justify a $310 million award?

1. Compensatory damages: make the plaintiff whole with economic and reputational proofs

Compensatory awards must track actual losses plaintiffs can prove—lost profits, lost business opportunities, remedial costs, and measured reputational harm. Courts have sustained very large compensatory verdicts in commercial disputes and trade‑secret cases: for example, a jury awarded Propel Fuels roughly $604.9 million in compensatory damages before exemplary damages and interest were added ^[3]. That illustrates how a $310 million sum can be purely compensatory where plaintiffs present documentary evidence, expert valuation testimony, and a theory linking defendant conduct to foreseeable economic harm ^[3].

2. Punitive/exemplary damages: punishment and deterrence when conduct is egregious

Punitive damages are awarded to punish and deter wrongful conduct and can dramatically enlarge a judgment beyond compensatory figures. Empirical surveys show punitive awards vary widely but are not uncommon in financial injury cases; historically the overall mean punitive award in RAND’s review was about $5.3 million, and other research finds high medians and means for large awards in recent years ^{[1] [2]}. Courts will allow large punitive sums when they find misconduct “reprehensible” or intentional—language used by a federal judge reviewing a large trade‑secrets award ^[3]. However, constitutional limits and appellate review can reduce grossly disproportionate punitive awards, a tension reported in legal commentary ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Disgorgement and restitution: stripping ill‑gotten gains

Disgorgement or restitution theories seek to take away the defendant’s profits rather than compensate the plaintiff for loss. Disgorgement can justify large awards when defendants reaped substantial gains from wrongdoing, especially in trademark, trade‑secret, fraud, or statutory‑penalty contexts. Contemporary litigation shows courts sometimes entertain multi‑hundred‑million remedies when the record supports substantial defendant profits or statutory per‑violation penalties that aggregate to large totals ^{[6] [3]}. Available sources do not mention a canonical $310 million disgorgement example, but the Propel and Netlist judgments show courts will enter very large remedies where profits or losses are substantial ^{[3] [7]}.

4. How plaintiffs combine theories to reach astronomical totals

Plaintiffs commonly layer compensatory, punitive, and statutory or disgorgement remedies; combined totals can balloon into the hundreds of millions or more. The Propel Fuels case combined roughly $605M compensatory with $195M exemplary damages and interest to exceed $833M—illustrating how layering can make a $310M award entirely plausible when multiple buckets of recovery are supported ^[3]. Similarly, massive class‑action statutory multipliers can produce astronomical exposures unless courts or settlements cap recoveries ^[6].

5. Limits and appellate risk: why big awards get reduced

Large jury awards frequently face post‑trial scrutiny. Judges reduce or remand punitive awards under due‑process or proportionality doctrine; commentators and courts have trimmed awards that produced extreme ratios between punitive and compensatory sums ^{[4] [5]}. The Greenpeace verdict reduction—where a judge cut a much larger award down to roughly $345M—shows trial outcomes can be substantially altered on judicial review ^[8]. Plaintiffs seeking $310M must therefore anchor each dollar to admissible proof and anticipate motions to limit punitive multipliers and statutory aggregation ^{[4] [8]}.

6. Practical takeaways for lawyers, juries and judges

To justify $310M, a plaintiff should present detailed economic proof tying losses to the defendant (for compensatory awards), evidence of malice or reckless disregard (for punitive awards), and a clear account of defendant profits if seeking disgorgement ^{[3] [1]}. Defendants will contest speculative forecasting and seek constitutional or statutory limits on punitive and aggregated statutory damages ^{[4] [5]}. Recent high‑stake verdicts and settlements show the market for nine‑ and ten‑figure awards exists, but appellate trimming and settlement dynamics remain decisive ^{[3] [8]}.

Limitations: available sources document large awards, trends in punitive damages, and examples like Propel Fuels, Netlist and Greenpeace, but they do not provide a single case expressly tying a $310M figure to a step‑by‑step damages calculation—specific modeling for any new $310M award would depend on facts not in the current reporting ^{[3] [7] [8]}.