Civil Jury Instructions – Avoiding Bias; Minimum Injury Requirements – Comment period expires Sept. 7, 2023

The following Model Utah Civil Jury Instruction addressing Minimum Injury Requirements has been updated and published.

The following Model Utah Civil Jury Instructions addressing techniques for Avoiding Bias and defining terms relating to Minimum Injury Requirements have been drafted and published.

CV107A – Avoiding Bias

CV632A – “Permanent Disability” Defined

CV632B – “Permanent Impairment” Defined

CV632C – “Permanent Disfigurement” Defined

CV632D – “Objective Findings” Defined

Please reference the instruction(s) in your comments. Although the comment period runs through September 7, 2023, the instructions are ready for use. The Model Civil Jury Instructions Committee will consider all comments made during the comment period and may revise the instructions as appropriate. To view all MUJI Civil instructions please visit the MUJI website – here.

The Judicial Council also encourages judges and practitioners to continuously share their experiences using any of the published instructions with the Model Civil Jury Instructions Committee. To view the Committee’s work please visit the MUJI Civil Committee website – here.

This entry was posted in Civil and tagged in Bias, CV107A, CV632, CV632A, CV632B, CV632C, CV632D, Damages, Motor Vehicles.

One thought on “Civil Jury Instructions – Avoiding Bias; Minimum Injury Requirements – Comment period expires Sept. 7, 2023”

Ken Johnson

August 8, 2023 at 4:27 pm

This comment concerns proposed new Model Civil Jury Instruction CV107A – Avoiding Bias. For the last phrase of the third listed technique for minimizing the impact of biases, I suggest changing the following phrase at the end from “. . . if they spoke in a more educated manner.” to “. . . if they spoke in a more educated or less educated manner.” I’m sure the sentence isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list of different perspectives about people, but the other examples in the sentence emphasize imagining people as different than they are, whereas the education example isn’t simply about imagining a difference, but doing so in one particular way (imagining the speech as “more educated”). Making this change will emphasize that any difference can result in bias, and possibly help people to see that biases can work to the detriment of anyone. An alternative would be something like, “. . . if they’re way of speaking suggested a different educational background.”