In Re: Amendments to the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration, the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, and the…

Summary

The Florida Supreme Court adopted new rules transferring authority to develop and approve standard civil, criminal, contract, and business jury instructions from the Court to its standing jury-instruction committees. The committees must follow specified publication, comment, voting, membership, and website-publication procedures, while trial judges may modify an instruction they find erroneous or inadequate and must explain the legal basis for doing so upon timely objection. The Court also amended the civil and criminal procedure rules and repealed the separate criminal standard-instructions rule, while clarifying that committee approval does not establish legal correctness or receive special deference.