On May 17, 2012, The Supreme Court of Florida issued its opinion
concerning
proposed new Standard Jury Instructions for product liability
cases. The Court preliminarily approved several of the proposed
instructions, but rejected a number of instructions and directed
the Committee to revise the proposed instructions. Among the
rejected proposed instructions were an instruction covering strict
which eliminated the differences between design and manufacturing
defects and eliminated the risk utility test; an instruction on
inferences of defect; and an instruction on
crashworthiness.
On February 1, 2013, the Committee submitted revised proposed
instructions for comment. The comment period ended on March 1,
2013. The changes contained in the revised instructions are
far less drastic than the initial proposed revisions. The
strict liability instruction essentially mirrors current
instruction PL 5 and maintains a distinction between design defects
and manufacturing
