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Hi, RickyMaveety - sorry you are having trouble understanding.
1. Several items - for example, in one occasion I had a jury zero out a badly injured defendant - the judge was so outraged he set aside the jury verdict. I also recall running across a study showing that for certain medical malpractice claims, federal judges in Federal Tort Claims Act cases tended to average higher awards than juries for comparable non-FTCA medical malpractice claims. All this is consistent with my experience of frequently encountering jury awards that are puzzlingly low.
2. The legal standards to which I refer include, for example the "strict liability" standard for products liability, in which a manufacturer can be held liable even if not negligent.
3. You must not be familiar with the concept of "forum shopping." In a libel case, venue is normally appropriate in any place that the allegedly defamatory statement was made. In the case of a defamatory book, that would be anywhere that the book is sold. A lot of books are sold in the U.S. and the U.K., so you could sue in either place. Similarly with broadcasts.
4. Well, it's not hard to sue someone in the U.S., that's true. You just draw up a complaint and pay a filing fee. But it is hard to win, because we have concepts such as "public figure" and "actual malice" that are absent in other countries and provide strong defenses to defamation suits.
5. On your last point, we'll just have to agree to disagree. In countries like Japan it is nearly impossible to sue corporations because of the organization-orientation of the country. I think that more structured countries like France and Britain likewise tend to favor organizations over individuals, as compared to the U.S. I agree with your substantive point about individual responsibility, but in a jury trial setting it's usually a lone plaintiff against a big impersonal corporation. The dramatic setting appeals to the U.S. tendency to favor individuals (notwithstanding your entirely correct point that the individual can only prevail by rejecting responsibility for herself).
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