There's no reason for barbarism. If the situation needs to be fixed then a change needs to happen one way or another (someone else pointed out a settlement amount hasn't been decided yet).

For this context a financial punishment is appropriate ("punishment should fit the crime"). And the existence of the formula above is actually helpful. It makes it simple to figure out exactly what the punishment amount should be, whereas flogging as a deterrent is a tad harder to measure, and as you point out, is barbaric.