OK, early reports say that the cowlings were not latched, but the crew got them home safely.... Is that not the most important thing?
That rather depends on your point of view.
While you may be sanguine about whatever hair-raising airborne experiences you have enjoyed, not everyone reacts in the same way.
BA were lucky, in that there was little collateral damage when the cowls departed (unlike some of the previous incidents), but the pax on one side of the aircraft were still treated to the sight of a flaming engine as the aircraft made its return to LHR.
More importantly, the incident was entirely preventable, being a result of poor design and shoddy maintenance which had resulted in multiple previous instances of the same event. That's what you should be reserving your "disgust" for.
So it seems to me entirely reasonable that punitive damages should be sought, particularly as that is going to provide the single biggest incentive for Airbus/IAE to redesign the cowl latching mechanism and/or incorporate some form of "unlocked" warning system.