This is such a litmus test, this case. Yes, America does weird things with punitive damages. But the injuries were really severe and the negligence significant. More often you get class action lawsuits where everyone involved gets mailed a cheque for $3.

It's not just America. McDonald's UK got involved in the UK's biggest ever libel case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case ; leaflets distributed in 1985 ended up resulting in a human rights judgement in 2005, after a lifetime of litigation and millions spent.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case

Seems kind of an opposite situation. There it was McDonalds suing a pair of people, not the other way around. And the human rights violation was by the UK government and not McD.