No, because this is a civil suit, not a criminal one.
In a criminal one you are correct -- if you try to rob a bank and try but fail to kill a bunch of hostages, you're still going to jail for possibly the rest of your life.
But in a civil trial, the main point is the damages. Yes there can be a punitive element on top, but only if there are damages in the first place. If you attempt something bad but don't succeed, a civil suit can't punish you. It's not like a criminal trial.
This is why I said the legal situation notwithstanding. I know this is how it works but I think it's nonsensical. The existence of punitive damages already throws out the idea that civil suits are just about real measured harm and includes the state overlaying elements of criminality on top of civil suits to punish wrongdoing. To me the only consistent stances are either not having punitive damages at all and accounting for intangibles directly in the real damages or having punitive damages that are totally orthogonal to the real harm. And just like criminal cases we can account for attempted X being less severe than X.
> The existence of punitive damages already throws out the idea that civil suits are just about real measured harm and includes the state overlaying elements of criminality on top of civil suits to punish wrongdoing.
No, it has nothing to do with elements of criminality.
It's the simple fact that if civil actions resulted in only restitution and nothing more, then everybody would be committing torts whenever they could, because sometimes you'll get away with it and sometimes you won't, but statistically you'll always come out ahead. Because sometimes people don't bring charges, sometimes they're too hard to prove, etc.
So the additional punishment is a way to correct that, to ensure that civil suits still function as deterrence. To ensure that if we only count the suits successfully brought and prosecuted, the tort-committer will still lose overall in the end.
There's nothing to do with criminality here, which is prosecuted by the state rather than by a private party.
> So the additional punishment is a way to correct that, to ensure that civil suits still function as deterrence
That's exactly what I mean by elements of criminality. You're not just saying that you harmed someone and have to make them whole but also that you did something wrong and have to be punished so you won't do it again. It's a fine by another name.
In a criminal one you are correct -- if you try to rob a bank and try but fail to kill a bunch of hostages, you're still going to jail for possibly the rest of your life.
But in a civil trial, the main point is the damages. Yes there can be a punitive element on top, but only if there are damages in the first place. If you attempt something bad but don't succeed, a civil suit can't punish you. It's not like a criminal trial.