Personally, when was a kid in junior high, I came home one day and found that my father was 'beat up'. His arm was in a sling, his nose was bloodied and missing a chunk of skin, and his front teeth were missing. He normally rode his bicycle to work daily. Well, that day, a person in a car ran a stop sign and plowed into him. The driver stopped, presumably there were a lot of witnesses around, and he didn't want to add a felony charge of hit-and-run. I wonder if he would have stopped if there was no one around to 'see it'. In any case, my father suffered a broken collarbone, broken shoulder, broken and scraped nose, bruised ribs, bruised jaw, scraped arm, and his front teeth on the upper jaw were knocked out from the impact. His helmet saved his life, because it ended up being cracked, essentially broken in half, and no longer usable.
After healing for two months, he sued the driver and that guy's insurance company, with his own personal injury lawyers, for about $250K.
It took a few more months, but he finally settled for $30,000 + time, medical and dental costs for the injury for the next 2 years.
My dad's lawyers said that the settlement was recommended, because at that point, he was nearly completely healed and suffered little lingering effects. It would have been difficult to show $250K worth of injury damage in court. So, they took the money after some negotiating with the insurance carrier. They notified the defendants and the court on Tuesday. By Friday, a few days later, my father received a call from his lawyers that he could pick up his $20,000 check. His lawyers said that they received payment for $30,000 from the insurance company the day before, and, minus their 1/3 contingency, they had a cashier's check for $20K waiting for him.
My father was also reimbursed for all the medical expenses and time off, as well as having dental work to put in an upper bridge to replace his missing teeth. It all turned out to be about another $15K at that point. He never had to pay any sort of federal or state income taxes on any of that. The full $20K + $15K were his free and clear. This was in the early 1980s.
Professionally, I worked for a company that was negotiating a buyout from (at the time large) company Blockbuster, the owners of Blockbuster Video. They agreed contractually on $50 million. I was getting ready to cash in all my stock options in anticipation of a large buyback purchase of stock. Then, Blockbuster reneged on the deal and my company sued them for breach of contract. They eventually won in court for the original $50 million agreed upon. However, a month after the judgment, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy. So, we had that "win", but little else. This was 20+ years ago.
I believe the movie "The Rainmaker" starring Matt Damon and Claire Danes, also deals with something like this. A civil trial where the 'winner' gets no money at the end because the 'defendant' and 'loser' declares bankruptcy.
Legally, I was seated as a juror on a civil trial where a group of homeowners, each having purchased homes in the $500K range, sued the developer for about $5 million. They alleged that the developer used substandard materials and methods, and that their homes after several years, began to "fall apart" and the homes began to really falter, with noticeable cracks and chips. Brand new homes looked like they were 100+ years old because of that. Thus, the suit had those 10 homeowners at $500K each. They wanted to be refunded the original purchase price.
They ended up settling for I guess $1 million or so + legal fees, as the developer agreed to pay for any retrofitting and house work needed for the next 2 years to bring those homes up to safety code. This was about 10 years ago.
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