Despite thinking this particular verdict is ridiculous, in a lot of cases, walloping unreasonable defendants if they lose is a mechanism to prevent overburdening the courts.

Courts are a wildly inefficient way to settle disputes, they know this, and they are overburdened docket-wise with mostly bullshit. There is a determined push by most courts across the country to not try cases that could be settled. Some force day-of-trial mediation for simple suits. For complex suits, the vast majority now require at least some mediation.

If you come along, refuse to settle a case that is by-the-books law and you lose, judges will generally impose enough to make you think twice about doing this again.

Whether they should, whether it's right, this is what happens. This has actually been fairly successful on the torts side. Only something like 2% of tort cases now go to trial across the US. Results in other areas are not so good yet. Family law is an area where it is very hard to get people to settle, even when lawyers on both sides tell their clients "you won't get what you want at trial, the judge is going to follow the law and statutory guidelines, and do X. We should settle". They still want a trial (mostly because they want some judge to tell them they were right and their ex was wrong, and instead the judge just tells them both they are wasting his time), then get angry at the lawyers.

In any case, to be fair to the judges, most people truly have no concept of the amount of stupid cases[1] that the average federal district court judge sees. This kind of stuff is why the average civil lawsuit now takes years to resolve.

[1] Not person did dumb thing stupid, but cases that are so trivially resolvable that they complete waste of time for everyone involved.