The loser usually had a bullet through the heart while the winner got to strum a guitar and sing about saddling up Old Paint. Dumb, but at least there was no nonsense about honor. We now see that these methods were inhuman, barbaric, and demeaning. Today, our highly evolved brains have carried inhuman, barbaric, and demeaning to new heights. We have the lawsuit.
American lawsuits take many forms.
A man trying to burglarize a school fell through a skylight, sued the school for an unsafe condition, and won. A boss sexually harassed a woman employee, who sued the company and won not an apology and a few thousand dollars for her discomfort but enough money to live the rest of her life in luxury. A car manufacturer painted over a scratch in the new paint and was hit with punitive damages in the millions. A fat man ate too much ice cream over many years, sued ice cream manufacturers for luring him into a health-threatening condition, and won millions with a variation of the attractive nuisance doctrine. Anguish can be caused by anything.