This case will indeed go to trial.United may want to settle, hell it's in their best interest to settle. However, Dr. Dao's attorney is the one dictating the terms, including compensatory and punitive damages. Compensatory is easy...hospital and rehab, plus loss of income etc. Punitive damages are up to a jury, and in this case the potential is massive. If you can rx $93M for spilling hot coffee in your groin, imagine what you can rx for fractured sinuses received at the hands of an airline and police to remove you from an airplane that you had boarded and on which you were peacefully waiting to depart.
The absolute disdain that the industry feels for it's clients is displayed right here, and it's evident in the term SLF...Self Loading Freight. It's f-ing arrogant, demeaning and intentionally disrespectful of the people that you are paid to serve. I only have 3.3M miles in the air, mostly on AA, but there is no f-ing way that I would have given up my seat on the plane if it was going to cost me a full days worth of income. A pissant $800 voucher with an expiration date wouldn't make up the difference.
BTW, quite a few of the people you denigrate as SLF...are a lot smarter than you. We not only fly on our own, we designed and built your goddamn planes.