When a jury is asked to interpret the jury instructions in a civil trial, what are the consequences if the instructions are claimed to be conflicting or ambiguous?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. McCurdy, F059872 (Cal. App. 2011):

When instructions are claimed to be conflicting or ambiguous, "we inquire whether the jury was 'reasonably likely' to have construed them in a manner that violates the defendant's rights. [Citation.]" (People v. Rogers (2006) 39 Cal.4th 826, 873.) The correctness of jury instructions is to be determined from the entire charge of the court, and not from consideration of parts of an instruction or from a particular instruction. We must consider the instructions as a whole and assume the jurors are intelligent persons, capable of understanding and correlating all the instructions which were given. (People

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