To punish a defendant and to deter a defendant and others from committing similar acts in the future.
The seeking of which hardly qualifies a profession as the being the most moral.
But it doesn't exactly make it Teh Evel either. I'd say the profession itself is morally neutral - it's the individual lawyers that are moral/immoral.
I don't think that forcing a corporation's hand through a lawsuit is necessarily a bad thing - and can in fact do a lot of good.
To use the example you referenced, it wasn't the greedy lawyers that sought a huge judgement against the corporation - originally, the plaintiff was seeking $20K to cover her medical costs (she sustained extensive 3rd degree burns). This settlement was refused by McD's, as was the larger settlement suggested under arbitration. The $2.7 million in punitive damages was awarded by the jury, and not arbitrarily (the figure was roughly 2 days worth of coffee sales at Mc Donalds worldwide - the jury thought that apropos). The judge disagreed with the amount of the damages (although he too found McD's to be grossly negligent and said so), and lowered the figure to $480,000.
Considering that this was only one of many cases of serious burns caused by McD's coffee (over 700 prior cases) and that the solution (lowering the holding temp of coffee) would cost McD's little or nothing - and that nevertheless McD's stoutly refused to change their operating procedures - the judge and jury felt that McD's had shown a reckless disregard for the safety of their customers. (For the record, the jury noted that the plaintiff was partially responsible for sustaining the burns, and lowered her compensitory damages accordingly.)
So, finally, McD's loses the case and lowers the damn coffee temp. Not exactly a cure for cancer, but another reason for corporations not to wantonly disregard the safety of their customers.
And yeah, I'm sure the plaintiff's lawyers got paid well. Most doctors also get paid very well to do their jobs, and generally people don't argue about the ethics of doing so.
Sorry for the hijack - this is somewhat of a hot-button (pardon the pun) issue for me. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.