How have instructions been interpreted by juries in a personal injury trial?

We find no reasonable likelihood the jury found the instructions self-contradictory or understood them, as appellant asserts, to foreclose jurors from applying perfect or imperfect self-defense against threats of imminent harm. (See People v. Cole (2004) 33 Cal.4th 1158, 1212.) "Jurors do not sit in solitary isolation booths parsing instructions for subtle shades of meaning in the same way that lawyers might. Differences among them in interpretation of instructions may be thrashed out in the deliberative process, with commonsense understanding of the instructions in the light of all that has taken place at the trial likely to prevail over technical hairsplitting." (Boyde v. California (1990) 494 U.S. 370, 380-381.) There is no reasonable likelihood jurors would fail to understand the difference between imminent danger and future harm, one being immediate and the other not. Accordingly, we conclude the instructions correctly stated the law.