the thing about these handouts is they rarely ever get anything near to the full amount, and if they get anything its usually in little penny packets. like a small amount every year. when you are talking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars there are all sort of legal devices lawyers can use to slow the payout to a trickle. the company which is liable is just not going to flat hand over 310m just like that. they might pay a lawyer $10m to ensure the family only gets $10,000 a year for year after year. then after that they will spend millions more to shift funds around with some creative accounting( legally ) to avoid payouts all together. anytime the family objects there will have to be another court hearing, more delays, more obfuscation, until the family runs out of money to hire lawyers. these later court proceedings do not attract the "no fee no win" lawyer types since they are legally an entirely different class of case, and there is no big payout for the lawyer anymore.. another tactic is for the company to just keep appealing the award and tying up the case for decades, delaying any payout. when this happens the family, who was expecting to be the new fresh prince of bel air, and who have been wracking up incredible debts in anticipation of their expected riches, will accept a full settlement for a mere fraction of the original. quite often what happens is the company tells the family it will file for bankruptcy and they will end up getting nothing and offers a one time payout of a small amount ( say $10 million in this case ) in exchange for full settlement.
New Zealand