How do you feel about extending this to direct murder?
Because that would be completely impractical. It would cause the economy to cease functioning. Statistical deaths and individual murders are fundamentally different things.
There's a fuzzy boundary between the two (as effects are concentrated on smaller and smaller numbers of people) but that doesn't mean there's no difference.
Even with individual murders, there are gradations depending on intention and mental state. Manslaughter and first degree murder are different crimes, even if the number of dead bodies is the same.
But more charitably: they did say "statistical death" so I presume the implication is "unintentional and non-targeted". Deliberately setting up deathtraps or ensuring a specific person will die but not others would probably be exempt. Of course that could be extremely difficult to prove if gross negligence became so easily affordable.
You "statistical death" is of course 100% correct. These kind of tradeoffs are done all the time when designing safety features, and using a monetary value per human life is the right way to do it.
Some people can't deal with that kind of rationality though.
Pay $12m in litigation to prove in litigation why your business thing is fine and legal
Pay $12m to off whoever's the driving force behind your harassment preventing them from doing it to the next guy who's pockets might not be deep enough to fend it off.
It's the pro-social thing to do really.