"In an earlier case [1] the judge blew a gasket when IBM refused to honour a wrongful dismissal verdict, and kept paying the imposed damages but refused to re-hire the employee: the damages were subsequently raised from €50k to €5 million. If the employee still would not have been returned to his job, the fine could have been raised even more, as there is no legal limit to imposed liquidated damages, as long as the fines are proportional to the case. And what is considered proportional can easily grow to very large sums when you repeatedly ignore a court order"
[1] that case had a very nice summary title: paying damages does not equate to adhering to the verdict; contempt of court
"In an earlier case [1] the judge blew a gasket when IBM refused to honour a wrongful dismissal verdict, and kept paying the imposed damages but refused to re-hire the employee: the damages were subsequently raised from €50k to €5 million. If the employee still would not have been returned to his job, the fine could have been raised even more, as there is no legal limit to imposed liquidated damages, as long as the fines are proportional to the case. And what is considered proportional can easily grow to very large sums when you repeatedly ignore a court order"
[1] that case had a very nice summary title: paying damages does not equate to adhering to the verdict; contempt of court