I believe the judge is doing this (sueing for 54M) because he wants to publically make a mockary of the consumer rights laws that allow people to sue other people for ridiculous sums of money for little or no reason. I don't believe he has any intention of collecting on the settlement. He has done a fine job of getting this in the public eye because the press is all over this. I think his goal is to create enough public interest and outrage that it will force lawmakers to cap the $ amounts people can sue for in consumer related lawsuits. I think this judge might be doing us a favor. I would hate to be sued by my neighbor for 100M because my kid missed a spot while mowing his lawn therefore not rendering services as promissed at the time of transaction....I'd rather he just didn't pay him the twenty bucks until the job was complete. holy crap this country is out of control!!.... I need to go practice.