Personal injury lawyers might not be as big as they are, but lawsuits in the US are kind of important for more than just monetary compensation, it’s to have case law and in essence introduce new regulations. McDonalds didn’t just have to pay medical bills for the Hot Coffee lawsuit, but McDonalds also had to change how they serve their coffee. Its part compensation and part making sure it doesn’t happen again or if it does, there is a clear path for what needs to happen. As awful as it is to have something bad happen, it’s worse if we don’t learn and change from it and our system of incorporating case law is pretty decent at that, if imperfect. No legal system can cover every scenario, but if it can adapt as new scenarios arise then it is all the more resilient (although that does kinda assume our Judiciary is truly impartial and there are no cronies trained by think tanks to give the illusion of impartiality)