Tom made an interesting observation:
It is very common to have a civil lawsuit brought that implicates criminal laws, but not have the criminal violations be charged. For example, if you steal a purse you go to jail, but if you steal a building you are rarely charged with a criminal offense. It is rarely to a civil litigant's advantage to bring up criminal matters and there are ethical rules limiting the interaction between the two.
What are the ethical rules that limit interaction between civil and criminal proceedings on the same facts?
This does seem like a fundamental problem: To my knowledge there is little consideration in criminal code for victim compensation. I don't know what case law conventions exist for this. Every U.S. state has a "Crime Victim Compensation Board" which attempts to reimburse victims of violent crimes, but that is a bureaucratic process and it appears designed only to cover direct costs resulting from such crimes.
Therefore: If a criminal has significant assets, and the civil law provides for significant punitive damages, then a victim stands to gain far more from a civil judgement or settlement (correct me if I'm wrong) – to such an extent that a victim of a wealthy defendant would likely refuse to cooperate in any criminal prosecution that could jeopardize his financial gains from a civil action. And without the cooperation of the victim, even if the state wanted to pursue criminal charges, presumably it would decline to because of the difficulty of succeeding.
This situation runs somewhat counter to the interest of the criminal justice system, which is to punish the offender, not reward the victim. It also allows wealthy criminals to "buy their way out of jail," which is something the criminal justice system does not like.
So is this conflict and result just an "unfair" fact of all common-law justice? Or are there mechanisms that exist to satisfy the demands of justice despite this conflict?