The aim of laws is compliance. If the low and medium fines of previous years have failed to achieve compliance, and fines eventually escalate to high, I'd argue it's far from excessive. If it were excessive a much lower amount would have achieved general compliance with that particular law, would it not?

Our regular human ideas for excessive don't count. There's a legal standard there. I don't know it.

Nobody does, really. It has to be defined in context of the 'gravity of the offence'. I'm sure someone could make a good argument that 1% of the value of a property is reasonable.

As a 'fine', 100 or even 200 percent of a property could be argued reasonable. 'You aren't using this property as the law intended, so you have to give it to us and pay a penalty'.

If I steal an apple from Walmart, should the fine be 1 percent of the value of the apple? Clearly not.

It is exceedingly rare for a fine to be struck down as a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The standard as articulated by Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 212 U.S. 86 (1909) is that the fine must be "so grossly excessive as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of law."

That case was about a $5000 a day antitrust fine, which had accumulated to $1.6 million, but had not forced compliance with the law. The Supremes concluded that the fine was not excessive, because the business was doing well enough not to comply despite the fines.

The fine would have to be grossly in excess of what it would take to force compliance by a reasonable business. A fine that amounts to a doubling of the property tax would almost certainly not be a violation of the Eighth amendment.

Well I would counter argue that if previous lower fines failed to influence anyone then a larger fine is not really excessive. I think the problem is that everyone always thinks it will be the other guy first and that why should they act before anyone else. Well the message is pretty clear now hurry up before the crap hits the fan we are serious and coming for you.