Case Title: In Re: Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases - Report No. 19-03

Citation: 

Docket Number: SC19-1246

State: florida

Court: Florida Supreme Court

Date: 2020-02-27T00:00:00Z

Document:
Supreme Court of Florida 
 
 
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No. SC19-1246 
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IN RE: STANDARD JURY INSTRUCTIONS IN CIVIL CASES—REPORT 
NO. 19-03. 
 
February 27, 2020 
 
PER CURIAM. 
 
The Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases 
(Committee) has submitted proposed changes to the standard jury instructions and 
asks the Court to authorize the amended standard instructions for publication and 
use.  We have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 2(a), Fla. Const. 
 
The Committee filed a report on July 24, 2019, proposing amendments to 
the following existing standard civil jury instructions:  403.7 (Strict Liability); 
403.8 (Strict Liability Failure to Warn); 403.15 (Issues on Main Claim); 403.17 
(Burden of Proof on Main Claim); 403.18 (Defense Issues); 403.19 (Burden of 
Proof on Defense Issues); and Model Instruction Number 7.  The proposals were 
published by the Committee in The Florida Bar News.  Two comments, from 
Attorney William Ourand and Attorneys Julie H. Littky-Rubin, Donald R. 
 
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Fountain, and W. Hampton Keen, were received by the Committee.  After the 
Committee filed its report, the Court published the proposals for comments.  No 
comments were received by the Court. 
 
We authorize the proposed amendments to the instructions herein at issue for 
publication and use as proposed.  We discuss the more significant amendments 
below. 
 
First, instruction 403.7b is amended to delete “[and]” between the consumer 
expectations and risk/benefit tests to reflect that a plaintiff may choose to prove a 
product’s defectiveness through the risk/benefit test but is not required to do so 
pursuant to our decision in Aubin v. Union Carbide Corp., 177 So. 3d 489 (Fla. 
2015).  The same amendment is also made to instruction 403.15e.  
 
Instruction 403.7b is further amended to add the following language to the 
definition of design defect to better track the statutory language of section 
768.1257, Florida Statutes (2019): 
 
[In deciding whether (the product) was defective because of a 
design defect, you shall consider the state-of-the-art of scientific and 
technical knowledge and other circumstances that existed at the time 
of (the product’s) manufacture, not at the time of the [loss] [injury] 
[or] [damage].  
 
 
The Notes on Use for instruction 403.7 are amended as follows.  Current 
Note on Use 1 is revised to direct readers to Aubin regarding when the jury should 
be instructed on the consumer expectations or risk/benefit test.  Current Notes on 
 
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Use 3 and 4 are deleted and the remaining Notes on Use are renumbered.  New 
Note on Use 5 is added to refer the reader to section 768.1257, Florida Statutes, for 
the state-of-the-art defense. 
 
Next, pertaining to instructions 403.17 and 403.19, the jury instructions on 
apportionment of fault are revised insofar as they are currently inconsistent with 
the instructions on legal causation and comparative fault.  The current language in 
the instructions describes the apportionment of comparative fault as requiring the 
jury to determine what percentage of the “total negligence” of the parties to the 
action was “caused” by each of them.  The Committee determined, and we agree, 
that the current comparative fault instructions are confusing because it is unclear 
how a person or entity can “cause” negligence, fault, or responsibility.  We 
recently approved similar changes to instructions 401.21 (Burden of Proof on Main 
Claim), 401.23 (Burden of Proof on Defense Issues), 402.13 (Burden of Proof on 
Main Claim), 402.15 (Burden of Proof on Defense Issues), 409.12 (Burden of 
Proof on Defense Issues), and 412.8 (Issues on Claim and Burden of Proof).  See 
In re Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases—Report No. 17-03, No. SC17-
1060, 2018 WL 2168867 (Fla. Feb. 1, 2018). 
 
As it pertains to instruction 403.18, instruction 403.18b is amended to delete 
the risk/benefit defense from its Note on Use.  Instructions 403.18c (Government 
Rules Defense) and 403.18d (State-of-the-art Defense) are also deleted.  
 
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Accordingly, existing instruction 403.18e (Apportionment of Fault) is renumbered 
as 403.18b.  Finally, new instruction 403.18c is added on the learned intermediary 
defense to failure to warn claims for products supplied through an intermediary.  
New Note on Use 3 is added to clarify that, for an apportionment of fault, the term 
“negligence” is appropriate in most cases, but other terms may be appropriate if 
another type of fault is at issue. 
 
Having considered the Committee’s report, we authorize the amended 
instructions as set forth in the appendix to this opinion for publication and use.  
New language is indicated by underlining, and deleted language is indicated by 
struck-through type.  In authorizing the publication and use of these instructions, 
we express no opinion on their correctness and remind all interested parties that 
this authorization forecloses neither requesting additional or alternative 
instructions nor contesting the legal correctness of the instructions.  We further 
caution all interested parties that any comments associated with the instructions 
reflect only the opinion of the Committee and are not necessarily indicative of the 
views of this Court as to their correctness or applicability.  The instructions as set 
forth in the appendix shall be effective immediately upon the filing of this opinion. 
 
It is so ordered. 
CANADY, C.J., and POLSTON, LABARGA, LAWSON, and MUÑIZ, JJ., 
concur. 
 
NO MOTION FOR REHEARING WILL BE ALLOWED. 
 
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Original Proceeding – Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in 
Civil Cases 
 
Laura K. Whitmore, Chair, Tampa, Florida, and Jeffrey Alan Cohen, Vice Chair 
and Subcommittee Chair, Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions 
in Civil Cases, Miami, Florida; Joshua E. Doyle, Executive Director, and Krys 
Godwin, Bar Liaison, The Florida Bar, Tallahassee, Florida; and Bryan S. Gowdy 
of Creed & Gowdy, Jacksonville, Florida, 
 
 
for Petitioner 
 
 
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APPENDIX 
403.7  STRICT LIABILITY  
a. 
Manufacturing defect 
A product is defective because of a manufacturing defect if it is in a 
condition unreasonably dangerous to [the user] [a person in the vicinity of the 
product] and the product is expected to and does reach the user or consumer 
without substantial change affecting that condition. 
A product is unreasonably dangerous because of a manufacturing 
defect if it is different from its intended design and fails to perform as safely 
as the intended design would have performed. 
b. 
Design defect 
A product is defective because of a design defect if it is in a condition 
unreasonably dangerous to [the user] [a person in the vicinity of the product] 
and the product is expected to and does reach the user without substantial 
change affecting that condition. 
A product is unreasonably dangerous because of its design if [the 
product fails to perform as safely as an ordinary consumer would expect when 
used as intended or when used in a manner reasonably foreseeable by the 
manufacturer] [and] [or] [the risk of danger in the design outweighs the 
benefits]. 
[In deciding whether (the product) was defective because of a design 
defect, you shall consider the state-of-the-art of scientific and technical 
knowledge and other circumstances that existed at the time of (the product’s) 
manufacture, not at the time of the [loss] [injury] [or] [damage].]