Sound to me like they're talking (their) philosophy rather than existing law. I for one agree, harassment shouldn't be considered lesser just because the victim admits to having a thick skin.
There’s a few things going on here. In a civil case, we are concerned with righting a wrong as much as we are with deterring future bad behavior. To attempt to undo damage, you need to know how much damage was done.
Additionally, some civil offenses do come with precomputed statutory damages, but it’s not possible to come up with such a number for every possible scenario. In the case where there isn’t a precomputed number available we fall back to computing a number after the offense happens based on the circumstances at hand.
If the fine is proportional to psychological harm, it punishes the victims who admit to having a thick skin.
If the fine is not proportional to psychological harm, it makes bullying the most sensitive people too cheap.
As an analogy, consider physical harm. We would probably agree that the punishment for slapping someone should be smaller than the punishment for murdering someone. However, what happens if someone is so exceptionally fragile that if someone slaps them, they literally die? What punishment should we apply? If you say "the punishment for murder", the accused will feel that this is unfair. But if you say "the punishment for slapping", then it means that if you know that someone is fragile like this, you can practically murder them for free.
