Of course it would be useless to sue in that situation. That's a civil case and, if the dude doesn't have anything, you're paying your lawyer to get a judgment you'll never see. If you wanted to pursue it I'm sure your lawyer would have though as long as you were paying him. And I have no doubt he would have loved going after the person if that person was Justin Bieber though. I assume this law would make the payments part of the criminal sentence so there wouldn't be any legal fees that the victim would have to pay to get that judgment.
I really don't get why you libs oppose EVERYTHING. I mean, if someone gets drunk and runs their car in to your house, and they don't have insurance, would you try to get what you could from them to fix your house or would you just say "well, they don't have anything, so I'll just live with a hole in the front of my house?"