There’s a few things going on here. In a civil case, we are concerned with righting a wrong as much as we are with deterring future bad behavior. To attempt to

There’s a few things going on here. In a civil case, we are concerned with righting a wrong as much as we are with deterring future bad behavior. To attempt to undo damage, you need to know how much damage was done. Additionally, some civil offenses do come with precomputed statutory damages, but it’s not possible to come up with such a number for every possible scenario. In the case where there isn’t a precomputed number available we fall back to computing a number after the offense happens based on the circumstances at hand.