For the most part, fees in civil suits are not to punish the wrongdoer (punishment is the domain of criminal law), but rather to bring about the status quo ante (how things were before the offending party screwed things up).

This is not unique to the US legal system, but actually a fairly widespread legal concept.

All law systems or the ones that come from UK law?

I was under the impression that in french or german law it's more about resolving disputes (who owes whom how much) and punishing "uncivil" but not necessarily criminal behavior (like not respecting agreement).

Well you're missing crucial information.

First of all, under paga you simply file to the lwda the grievances of the employer and they decide if they want to do the work of investigation or just hire you, at 25% when any lawyer will charge you 33-40%, to investigate for them.

Of course the defense would call it the 'sue your boss' law because it is only used when your boss breaks the law and you are forced to sue them in order to utilise the legal system to ensure compliance of the legal code.

This is a labor dispute, the entire relationship between the parties is based on money, if an employer has been stealing income of course money is going to be attached to the concept of justice.

> better solutions

Better solutions to what? Employers breaking the laws? What can you suggest? Asking that question is what created the labor code.

> the damage they do is not visible till later where it is already huge.

Can you elaborate on what you meant by this?

>> better solutions

>Better solutions to what? Employers breaking the laws? What can you suggest?

I'd suggest fining employer an amount it will feel punishing. Also sometimes additionally some people that were in charge at the time.

If the employees were harmed financially (they didn't get some money they should get as employees) the debt to them should be formally recognized. If employees were harmed in non-financial ways it could be translated to money but it should be solely on the base what was the harm and how much harm was done to them as human beings regardless of how much they earned and where they worked and on what position. They should be awarded some financial aid from the government for that (because it's the government is the one that failed to force the employer to obey the rules). This fund could be financed by fines. Most important part of the idea is that punishment relies solely on actions performed by employer and it's financial status so that it feels the punishment and compensation for harmed depends solely on non-financial damage done to employee without taking into account how rich was employer or employee.

>> the damage they do is not visible till later where it is already huge.

>Can you elaborate on what you meant by this?

You attach money to imprisoning people, it works for a while for both running the prison system and making (or saving) money while doing so. After a while you end up with disproportional population of inmates because it turned out that making jailing people profitable might have that effect in the long run.

Hospitals create bodies that make purchases of medical supplies and equipment for them to save money by buying in bulk and having stronger bargaining position. At some point someone has a brilliant money making (saving) idea that instead of paying to run those bodies from hospitals funds according to the needs it could be better if they could take a percentage of value of orders they execute. Bodies become independent, profitable, privatized. Behold, you just created incredibly powerful middle man that has incentive for the medical supplies to be as expensive as possible. After a while you notice what you've done because now you have a healthcare that's at least twice as expensive and any comparable healthcare in the world.

There are more examples like that. Civil forfeiture. Lobbying. Pretty much pick anything wrong in the US and you'll almost always find money making scheme somewhere among the causes that seemed like a good idea at a time when it was introduced.

And yet I've seen countless people on HN, both American and European, decrying what they feel are lax civil penalties because they haven't completely bankrupted the company against which they're levied.

Those are two orthogonal questions. How big should the fines be and who should actually get the money?

Fine should be punishing for the offender and money should go to national central bank.

My guess as an American is that it incentivizes victims to step forward, if in a somewhat self-serving way. I wouldn't be surprised if you told an average blue collar American that you won a class action lawsuit against a former employer, of if you received a court settlement in the past against the FOO company, that they'd expect you to be quite rich, or at least to have received a large amount of dough. I suspect they would have no idea that the real winners were in fact the lawyers on both sides.

Exactly. It seem that the justice is served but it's just a side offect of money making scheme for lawyers that taxes economy and exacts undue burden on actual justice system.

fines aren't a great way to enforce justice either in my opinion, because they incentivise finding perpetrators where there aren't any, and being heavy-handed with enforcement of the law in order to bring additional funds into the courts and police departments.

I say we just tie people up and beat them with a cucumber until they say they're sorry

Fines are good way to correct behavior because people generally hate loosing money. The problem starts only when that money is transferred to some other party that can influence the process in any way (even the victim, definitely police or lawers).