The Wisconsin Jury Instructions - Civil have now been in publication for 52 years. For nearly every year since their inception in 1960, the Wisconsin Jury Instructions - Civil have been updated by the Wisconsin Civil Jury Instruction Committee of the Wisconsin Judicial Conference with substantive support in their preparation and publication provided by the U.W. Law School's Continuing Legal Education for Wisconsin (CLEW).
The instructions contain over 490 suggested uniform jury instructions for use in Wisconsin civil trials. CLEW's description of the publication continues: "Each jury instruction is followed by Committee comments which provide helpful research assistance. In addition, many instructions contain special verdict questions to assist in preparation of the verdict."
In this week's installment of Law Library News, I'd like to list some of this year's changes to the civil jury instructions:
JI-260 Expert Testimony
JI-1023 Medical Negligence
JI-1390 Injury by Dog
JI-1732 Damages: Duty to Mitigate: Intentional Tort (new)
JI-1815 Injury to Spouse: Loss of Consortium
JI-2006.5 Battery: Defense of Property
JI-3051 Contracts: Ambiguous Language (new)
JI-3300 Lemon Law Claim: Special Verdict
JI-7050 Involuntary Commitment: Mentally Ill
JI-8012 Trespasser: Definition
JI-8045 Duty of a Proprietor of a Place of Business to Protect a Patron from Injury Caused by Act of Third Person
JI-8100 Eminent Domain: Fair Market Value (Total Taking)
JI-8101 Eminent Domain: Fair Market Value (Partial Taking)
The jury instructions are arranged by broad topic areas such as General Instructions, Negligence, Intentional Torts, Contracts, Persons, and Property to name some of the main ones, and then broken down further into more distinctive topics as Jurors' Duties, Standard of Care Required, Duties of Persons in Specific Situations, Misrepresentation, and Damages for example.
The jury instructions also feature an extensive "Table of Cases Cited" and an excellent index.
The library has two print copies of this important title for your reference:
1) Reserve Collection: KFW2942.6 W58 1981
2) Reference Collection: KFW2942.6 W58 1981
Due to license restrictions, the library is unable to offer this product electronically.
For more information on ordering, please see CLEW's online "Publications Purchase Site" or contact them directly at (608) 262-3833 or clew@law.wisc.edu.
Submitted by Eric Taylor, Evening Reference Librarian on April 3, 2012
This article appears in the categories: Law Library/IT
